Elizabeth Warren versus Barack Obama on Leadership

[Karmadillo]

A depressing piece well worth reading. It's not all that long.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/matt-stoller-elizabeth-warren-versus-barack-obama-on-leadership.html

Elizabeth Warren versus Barack Obama on Leadership
by Matt Stoller
July 18, 2001

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There was some laughter in the room, but she wasn’t kidding. Warren believes that consumer protection is necessary for a just society, and spends a great deal of time trying to persuade the public of the necessity and legitimacy of government. Imagine that – a public servant who thinks that communicating with and persuading the public of the merits of their ideas.

Contrast this with Barack Obama, a person who never fails to wrap his true agenda in gauzy opaque process jargon. Obama won’t back his own NLRB or Boeing workers, or even Boeing itself; he thinks that neither side should waste time in court. He won’t announce Social Security or Medicare cuts, he wants it to be part of a Grand Bargain for whom no one has to take responsibility. He demands an end to earmarks, or something, but we need an infrastructure bank or something. As a result, the Democratic Party is enmeshed right now in a guessing game about the true goals of their leader, paralyzed and unable to govern. When Warren is present, by contrast, the Republicans are able to argue strongly that they do not believe in government as an agent of good, while Democrats are able to articulate the opposite. It’s a real, open, honest debate. There’s no sliding around with 11 dimensional chess nonsense, it’s straight up democracy.

<edit>

I’ve seen Warren in crowds before; they love her, they feel like finally, here’s a person who is stronger and smarter and better than the bankers. They crowd around her, tell her their stories, of bankruptcy, of joblessness, of sick kid or parent, as if to say “finally someone is listening”, someone who understands. It’s who she is. It’s real leadership. And it’s why she’s been able to coherently assemble a bureaucracy that has already won accolades for its attempts to simplify lending regulations, and why the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel served as a remarkable oasis of intellectual honesty in Washington during the bailouts.

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Many people are “disappointed” with Obama. But, while it is certainly true that Obama has broken many many promises, he projected his goals in his book The Audacity of Hope. In Audacity, he discussed how in 2002 he was going to give politics one more shot with a Senate campaign, and if that didn’t work, he was going into corporate law and getting wealthy like the rest of his peer group. He wrote about how passionate activists were too simple-minded, that the system basically worked, and that compromise was a virtue in and of itself in a world of uncertainty. His book was a book about a fundamentally conservative political creature obsessed with process, not someone grounded in the problems of ordinary people. He told us what his leadership style is, what his agenda was, and he’s executing it now.

more...

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[izquierdista]

2. Shows how he raised most of his money last time

"(Obama's) book was a book about a fundamentally conservative political creature obsessed with process, not someone grounded in the problems of ordinary people."

No wonder he gets along with the CEO class.

[rhett o rick]

3. R&K

[somone]

4. This is a must-read.

[ProSense]

5. Imagine

"Imagine that – a public servant who thinks that communicating with and persuading the public of the merits of their ideas."

A public servant who fights for Wall Street reform, including the establishment of a CFPB, ignoring all the cries to "kill the bill."

September 2010:

Fighting to Protect Consumers

Posted by Elizabeth Warren

Over the past several weeks, the President and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection.

The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has also asked me to take on the job to get the new CFPB started—right now. The President and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done.

President Obama understands the importance of leveling the playing field again for families and creating protections that work not just for the wealthy or connected, but for every American. The new consumer bureau is based on a pretty simple idea: people ought to be able to read their credit card and mortgage contracts and know the deal. They shouldn’t learn about an unfair rule or practice only when it bites them—way too late for them to do anything about it. The new law creates a chance to put a tough cop on the beat and provide real accountability and oversight of the consumer credit market. The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over. This new bureau is based on the simple idea that if the playing field is level and families can see what’s going on, they will have better tools to make better choices.

If the CFPB can succeed at leveling the playing field, we can go a long way toward repairing a gaping hole in the budgets of millions of families. But nobody has ever thought or argued that the consumer bureau can fix everything. Lost jobs, stagnant incomes, rising costs for college, dwindling retirement savings—there’s a lot of work to be done.

When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush. Her mother had died, so she was up front with her little brothers and sisters bouncing around in the back. When I was growing up, she talked about life on the prairie, about marrying my grandfather and making a living building one-room schoolhouses, about getting wiped out in the Great Depression. She was hit with hard challenges throughout her life, but the moral of her stories was always the same: she would solve her problems one at a time by pulling up her socks and getting to work.

It’s time for all of us to pull up our socks and get to work.

Thank you President Obama and Elizabeth Warren.

[jaxx]

6. That source is usually depressed.

Anything good makes them sad.

[Jazz Ambassador]

7. I'm confused. Has Warren actually ever led anything?

Ok, the 5-person TARP panel. But other than that? I mean, her rhetoric is awesome, but so was the rhetoric of this other guy with Harvard Law ties who had never really led anything until a couple of years ago...

[dionysus]

8. .

:rofl:

[Azathoth]

9. This Warren worship from the Obama-haters is getting delusional

Warren has never administrated anything in her life. She was a law professor who got tapped to chair the TARP oversight panel. While she may be a well-intentioned advocate for the middle class, there is precisely zero evidence that she is any kind of leader at all, never mind the exceptional, near-superhuman kind who can single-handedly lead a large government bureaucracy down an effective, uncompromising, morally righteous path in the face of relentless opposition from the richest people in the world. Put her in charge of CFPB and within two years Warren-bashing will be the new fad on the hard Left. In fact, that's probably part of why she doesn't want the job; she knows the same leftists who are now eagerly embracing her as a cudgel with which to bludgeon Obama will be first in line to stab her in her the back when she becomes the one responsible for making their demands "happen".

Oh course, all this is moot, because the author read Warren's book and knows her heart, or some shit. What a clown.

[Scurrilous]

11. Well said.

:thumbsup:

[markpkessinger]

14. Your criticism of Warren is the same as one the right often aims at President Obama...

...i.e., the lack of executive experience, or the "what has he/she ever run" argument. It is no more valid when leveled at Elizabeth Warren than it was when right-wing pundits hurled it at the President.

It amazes me the way Obama's hardest core apologists insist upon seeing every issue through the lens of "they're just trying to bring down my hero."

[Azathoth]

15. It's not a criticism of Warren

It's a simple, factual observation. She has limited experience in government, and none in executive or bureaucratic leadership positions. Does that mean she couldn't be effective in the job? Absolutely not. I personally would have liked to see her try it. But the article isn't attempting to make that case. Instead, it simply asserts, without any evidence, that Warren is an amazing, passionate, effective leader, and then proceeds to use that as a device to relentlessly savage Obama. It's a delusional, fact-free hit-piece from an author who is clearly unserious (and who, by his own admission, has harbored a dislike for Obama dating back to the primaries, a trait that seems to be shared by quite a few of the professional "progressive" Obama critics).

Obama never ran on executive leadership experience, and none of his (sane) supporters claimed to know precisely what type of leader he would turn out to be when placed in charge of the federal government. If they had written articles like this during the campaign, they would have been rightly laughed off the stage.

[SidDithers]

10. Unrec...nt

Sid

[bvar22]

12. Rec!

bvar22

[girl gone mad]

13. Great piece from Stoller.

His comments on Obama's distaste for political activists are apt, but disheartening. Our nation was founded on, and has thrived because of passionate activism. Our system "basically works" only because of the steady progress enabled by radical reformers throughout history. This constant tide of revision provides a framework for the societal evolution which is necessary for the survival of any true democracy.

Obama is ignorant of the key role that ideologically-driven political activism plays in protecting the economic and social stability of the underrepresented masses. In seeking constant compromise and avoidance of any hint of impassioned advocacy, Obama has by default allied himself with entrenched elites, who fear the destructive and reconstructive forces of activism, and naturally work to halt systemic evolution. Without the strong barrier to usurpation that steady activist-driven progress provides, the powerful rapidly encroach on the powerless and life becomes radically worse for the majority.