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| Bob's snap - "This is as close as I got to Bill Clinton" |
Bill Clinton knows how to play the room. So when the 42nd
president of the United States took the podium at the Convention Center in
Providence yesterday, he opened with: “I love Rhode Island.”
The former leader of the free world also has a fondness for Seth
Magaziner, for whom he was here campaigning.
“He represents hope,” Clinton said, invoking both our state
motto and his famous 1991 campaign slogan, when it was he coming from nowhere
to best a political insider during an economic downturn.
Magaziner was just eight-years-old then, but he was already a
Clinton supporter.
He wrote a letter to the editor in the Bristol Phoenix extolling the virtues of the 32-year-old Arkansas governor. “I think that’s what put him over the top,” Magaziner joked. His father, Ira Magaziner, is a longtime friend and adviser of Clinton’s, who worked in the White House and now heads the Clinton Global Initiative.
“He’s a total policy wonk, and that’s why I love talking to
him,” Seth said when I asked him about the behind-the-scenes Bill Clinton.
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| Seth's father and long-time Clinton advisor, Ira Magaziner |
Clinton did have a good sense of Magaziner’s policy proposals,
speaking at length about his so-called “blueprint” that would create an
infrastructure bank, a clean energy fund and investing a greater portion of the
pension fund in emerging local businesses.
“You’ve been through a really rough time since this financial
crash,’’ Clinton said. ‘‘You deserve as many good jobs as quickly as you can
get them, and Seth Magaziner will help you get them.’’ He said Rhode Island’s
treasurer’s office has more constitutional authority than many other states,
and that Magaziner’s so-called “blueprint” will help improve Rhode Island’s
economy.
“He really did read the whole thing,” Magaziner told me
afterwards. “Of course I was nervous when I knew he was reading it but I was
excited when I heard that he liked it.”
Magaziner said he first mentioned the Clinton last summer that
he was considering running for general treasurer. I asked him if Clinton
offered any advice.
“He won his campaign based on promoting ideas and his advice to
me was to do the same here,” Magaziner said. “Anyone who is running for
treasurer right now has to be talking about those core economic issues. He
understood, especially given everything Rhode Island is going through, that’s
what people would want to hear.”
Bob Plain
is the editor/publisher of Rhode Island's Future. Previously, he's worked as a
reporter for several different news organizations both in Rhode Island and
across the country.