''George's leadership was not based on raw brain power,'' recalled Mitch Kurz, a classmate who now runs his own marketing consulting firm in Norwalk, Conn. ''He had an intangible quality about him, that there wasn't a problem that couldn't be solved -- not necessarily by him, but somehow.''

IN 92 years of training presidents, Harvard Business School has never trained a president of the United States. Indeed, the M.B.A. has not been widely viewed as proper preparation for a career in politics, in part because of the management failings of one of the school's best and brightest: Robert S. McNamara, the former secretary of defense. But Mr. McNamara's quantitatively driven analytical style, which led him astray in Vietnam, is actually antithetical to the more broad-based, qualitative general management taught by Harvard.

There is also a misperception -- even among many students in the school -- that Harvard's management training is applicable solely to business. It is true that a high percentage of the case studies used in its courses are corporate situations. And most students come from the private sector and return there upon graduation. But Harvard Business School training is much more about process than content; its problem-solving and decision-making methodology is easily transferable to the public sector.

In Mr. Bush's class, that point was made presciently during discussion of one of the very rare public-sector case studies, on the paper flow in the office of Edward M. Kennedy, then as now a senator from Massachusetts. Classmates said that when a student challenged the case's relevance to a business degree, the professor responded: Who knows? Someone in the class could end up as president of the United States.

From his seat in the top row, Mr. Bush -- often relied upon for humor -- raised his arms over his head in a Nixonesque victory gesture.

M.B.A.'s now in elective politics say that course work at business school -- including marketing, finance, accounting and political economy -- has become as relevant to governing as any other academic training, if not more so.

''The president,'' said Representative Chet Edwards, a Texas Democrat who graduated from the school in 1981, ''is the manager of the largest and most powerful corporation in the world.'' Of course, the public sector is different: there, popularity is a more important performance criterion than profitability, and checks and balances are not financial terms but constraints on executive authority.