Latest boyhood crush-turned-policy: Rybak’s drinking fountain of youth

"Give me the child until he is 7, and I’ll show you the man," the saying goes. And if that man holds public office, his childhood experiences can steer policy — a President Proust might make madeleine cookies mandatory.

The latest local example: Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak’s boyhood fondness for gurgling public water fountains led to a $500,000 city project for 10 new artist-designed drinking fountains. And that follows the announcement of a $180,000 publicity campaign touting the city’s (currently rank) water. Perhaps Rybak’s still thirsty from two years ago, when an onion ring obsession from his youth informed his support for a new Porky’s drive-through restaurant in Northeast Minneapolis over neighbors’ objections and zoning prohibitions.

A decade ago, Gov. Arne Carlson had a dream of building state boarding schools, prompted by his experience escaping a dead-end New York City immigrant upbringing via a scholarship to an elite East Coast boarding school. The Legislature chipped in $12 million to make Carlson’s wish come true, but the dream soon faded as Synergy Academy in Minneapolis closed after a brief existence, and another school proposed for Gilbert, Minn., was turned down by the town.

Carlson’s successor, Jesse Ventura, seemed to short-circuit the nostalgia-policy connection, acting on his boyish desires in real time — slashing state fees on jet skis, for example. (He owned personal watercraft.) Alas, Ventura hasn’t yet achieved his stated ambition to be reborn as double-D bra, or we might learn whether an article of lingerie could best Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken in the race for U.S. Senate.