Lord Rockingham To Advise State Department
8:55AM ON
09/21/2012
BY
Beth Comery
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So opens the L.P. Hartley novel The Go-Between. If true, then who better to advise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton than the former Lord Rockingham of 90’s rockers the Upper Crust, a.k.a. Ted Widmer.
Widmer steps down today from his current position as director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University and according to the Brown Daily Herald will now
. . . serve as assistant for special projects to President Christina Paxson and as senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to a University news release. Widmer will divide his time between the two roles — advising Paxson on various initiatives, including planning commemorations of the University’s 250th anniversary and providing analysis for the U.S. State Department.
“I would just say that I’m excited to be taking on some new challenges, and proud to be at Brown,” Widmer wrote in an email to The Herald. He could not be reached for a longer comment because of a commitment in Washington.
Widmer is no stranger to the Clinton clan having served as Bill’s foreign policy speechwriter from 1997 to 2001. We wrote him up before when his book “Ark of the Liberties: America and the World” dropped. And should Hillary ever wonder ” What would Martin van Buren do?” Widmer’s your guy.
My favorite Upper Crust video “Let Them Eat Rock” after the jump. And Widmer performed just a few years ago on New Year’s as Edward van Mente so this side of him is still in there. Let’s hope his unique perspective informs our foreign policy.
Jeez, this should be Romney’s theme song.
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October 23rd, 2012 at 9:28AM
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[...] Brown Library, and adviser to Hillary Clinton on affairs of state, Edward “Ted” Widmer, a.k.a. Lord Rockingham, will read from “Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy” [...]
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[...] to 6:30pm — Short live music sets from Ted Widmer (former presidential speechwriter and Lord Rockingham of the Upper Crust), Keith McCurdy (of Vudu Sister, accompanied by violin and stand-up bass), the Sugar Honey Ice Tea, [...]