Perhaps you've heard her interview with Bill Moyers when she talked about her meeting with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton about the bankruptcy bill.
Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton read it and asked for a meeting to discuss the bill and Warrens research, which showed that it would disproportionately affect women and children. After the meeting, Mrs. Clinton went back to the White House and the Clinton Administration reversed its position on the bill. President Clinton eventually vetoed it, and in her autobiography, Hillary Clinton took credit for preventing the bankruptcy bill from passage.
Yet when Clinton became Senator, everything changed. When the bankruptcy bill came up again, she voted for it.
Warren explained:
ELIZABETH WARREN: As Senator Clinton, the pressures are very different. Its a well-financed industry. You know a lot of people dont realize that the industry that gave the most money to Washington over the past few years was not the oil industry, was not pharmaceuticals. It was consumer credit products. Those are the people. The credit card companies have been giving money, and they have influence.
I think the lesson from this episode is not so much about the corruption of Hillary Clinton (although that's definitely part of it), but about our system's ability to corrupt all but a precious few. Some embrace this corruption enthusiastically. Others reluctantly make a deal with the Devil and then wake up one morning to find that they're no longer the courageous public servant they thought they were.