Elizabeth Warren for Public Office

By John Ballard

I left a comment Sunday morning at Paul Krugman's column "The Bernanke Conundrum" and was surprised to find it listed #8 out of 254.(Krugman had a hammer in each hand and was trying to decide which to use first to hit himself in the head.)

Elizabeth Warren is someone with what it takes. Her credentials are impeccable, her grasp of the big picture is clear, she is plain-spoken and she has clear empathy for real problems. She had me with Hello when Terry Gross interviewed her last year.

There were hundreds more comments at another link. I have no idea how I got this one, but I notice a few other readers agreed.

This morning I came across "The woman Democrats need" in the Boston Globe. 

Warren has spent her career laying the groundwork for what might be called progressive populism. From her perch in Cambridge, she�s excoriated the unfair credit and lending practices that, in part, gave rise to the current crisis. She was the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which, if created, would regulate credit cards and mortgages in the same way home appliances are regulated now. (Full disclosure: Warren once wrote about the agency in the publication I help edit.) And well before the bubble broke in the summer of 2007, when America was still riding high on George W. Bush�s economy, Warren was speaking out against the incredible pressure the 21st century economy was putting on the middle class. She was derided as a Cassandra, but she was right.

If all this made Warren a household name among progressives, it was the economic crisis that catapulted her onto the national stage. As chairwoman of the TARP Oversight Committee, she�s been responsible for examining the bank bailouts and the regulatory response. Warren has vocalized the concerns of many Americans - but not many politicians - who are outraged by the rampant greed that led to the crisis, and the refusal of Wall Street to take responsibility. �I think the problem has been all the way throughout this crisis, that the banks have been treated gently and everyone else has been treated really pretty tough,�� said an exasperated Warren last fall, echoing what so many others - in both parties - have come to believe.

These people need someone of Warren�s stature. The timing is perfect: her term at TARP Oversight will come to an end in the spring of 2011, just as a Senate candidate would have to be ramping up. She�d have a base of support on the Internet as soon as she announces. Sure, a Warren campaign would provoke guffaws from the right: What does a Harvard professor really know about an economic crisis? Yet underneath the polished pedigree is a teenage bride from Oklahoma. She�s as much an everyday person as Scott Brown; she just happens to be a brilliant scholar as well. When she�s championing the middle class, she�s not doing so because it�s politically expedient, but because she feels connected to it in a way few politicians are. And she has the intellectual chops to convert that connection into dramatic policy change. Sadly, few politicians can say that, either.

It's been over a year since her interview with Terry Gross. I blogged about it at the time and still recalled it the following April. Her clarity of thought and disarming ability to say "I don't know" during an interview (I saw her say that once in another interview) gives her complete credibility in my book. When I get frustrated with the turgid slowness of the mortgage mess which remains tangled I remember her explanation and get pissed off all over again at how unbelievably irresponsible the credit and banking people have behaved bringing about the mess. This business of loan processing is one of many poisonous details in the larger picture of "moral hazards" gone wild. She splained it well but like everyone else is helpless to do anything about resolving it.

To this moment most people don't appreciate the full measure of the financial mess left behind by the negligence of the Bush administration. When the president made reference to it last night he was actually being soft on his predecessor. He knows, again as most people do not, that it was far more than benign indifference for the last two terms that led to the catastrophe he had on his plate when he came into office. It was a frame of mind tracking all the way back to Ronald Reagan, rooted in that abysmally stupid "government IS the problem" remark. With that cute turn of phrase Reagan hoodwinked legions of influential leaders in business and government, including Bill Clinton and Democratic cohorts as well.

(To be fair, the idea was not original with Reagan or his advisers. I recall the same sentiment beginning to simmer during the Carter years. It makes no difference where it came from because we all drank the same koolade and learned the hard way how toxic it could be. Yeah, I thought it was a good idea, too. But like all black and white positions there is need for shades of gray.)

Anyway, the magnitude of the global financial collapse looming at the end of 2008 was the monetary equivalent of the Haitian earthquake. The scope of devastation without intervention would have been as dramatic as the differences in destruction of Port-au-Prince compared with an earthquake of the same magnitude in California only a short time before. It was serious enough to get the attention of everyone in a position to know how bad it could be. When China and Europe act in concert, and when big shots are still discussing the need of regulatory reforms even now in Davos, over a year later, that means the crisis was both serious and imminent.

Back now to Elizabeth Warren.

Keep an eye on this woman. She is cut from the right fabric and if she were drafted, she would be hell on wheels to beat.

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On a different note, not related to Elizabeth Warren but having everything to do with financial matters when understood in budgetary terms, historian Garry Wills, another guest on Fresh Air, tell a story of presidential secrecy tracking back to the development of the Atomic bomb that will take your breath away.