Seven weeks removed from the political reality that cost her a job as one of the nation’s best-known — and controversial — advocates for consumers and the middle class, Elizabeth Warren now officially wants to return to Washington as the junior senator from Massachusetts. But if she is really serious about wanting to help working Americans and reform Wall Street, Warren should consider a different line of work: She should get a job as a partner at Goldman Sachs.
The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. First of all, the genuine financial reform that many people hoped would occur after the near-catastrophe of three years ago has failed to materialize in any meaningful way, notwithstanding the 2,200-pageDodd-Frank law. What’s clearer than ever is that much of the status quo has been restored on Wall Street — albeit with fewer firms — and that, with the much-needed oversight of regulators, the financial sector itself needs to take the lead in regaining trust and respect at home and around the world. That’s where Warren can make a real difference, once she abandons her Senate run.
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In both debt plans, the wealthy win.
The Senate campaign will not be easy for Warren. Not only has she never before run for public office, the 62-year-old Harvard law professor will also have to figure out how to get past at least seven other announced candidates, including experienced state and local politicians, and win the Democratic primary, which is a year away. Then, in November 2012, she would have to defeat the incumbent, Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who seems to have everything the folksy Warren lacks: a light political touch, charisma in abundance, a $10 million war chest thanks to Wall Street’s largesse, and his own hilarious “Saturday Night Live” sketch. At the moment, the people of Massachusetts seem to like Brown, too. In a recent Boston Globe poll, 49 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of him, while 26 percent viewed him unfavorably, making Brown the most popular major politician in the state.
Warren is nothing if not intrepid. She spent Wednesday, her first day on the campaign trail, crisscrossing Massachusetts in an effort to prove that she has the determination for the contest. She is clearly trying to be the anti-Martha Coakley, the state attorney general, whose lackluster campaign contributed to her loss to Brown in the 2010 special election to fill the seat held for 47 years by the late Ted Kennedy.
Warren’s political message seems to be that she will fight hard to protect those without a voice, something she had hoped to do as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created by Dodd-Frank at her specific urging — thanks to an article she wrote a few years earlier — and with her in mind as its leader. But her occasionally abrasive style reportedly got on the nerves of Republican lawmakers, Wall Street lobbyists and officials in the Obama administration. Of course, there was more to the battle than just Warren’s style; in early May, a group of 44 Republican senators vowed to block any nominee to head the bureau until it was substantially revamped to have fewer teeth. Richard Cordray, Obama’s choice to head the agency, is still awaiting Senate confirmation.
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