Writing for Vox, Ezra Klein lays out The case for Elizabeth Warren, and it’s a solid one.
I’m just going to quote a couple of paragraphs here, from the beginning, middle, and end, and encourage everyone to go read the article.
Klein writes, at the top:
The case for Warren over her competitors is threefold. She understands America’s problems better than anyone else in the field, in part because it’s her research and analysis that now forms the base for much of the policy debate. She understands how to focus and wield the powers of the regulatory state better than anyone else, because she’s actually done it, and because it’s core to her political project. And she is, far and away, the candidate with the clearest plan for making ambitious governance possible again.
A key part of Warren’s case is her success in setting up a new and incredibly successful administrative agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She built her reputation first as a lawyer and then as an academic, so she surprised a lot of Washington types with “the extraordinary job she did setting up the CFPB as its first director”:
“She did an effective job starting up that organization by almost any measure,” Jake Siewert, a former senior adviser in the Obama Treasury Department who now heads corporate communications at Goldman Sachs, told Vox. “Even the people who hate the CFPB think it’s too effective.”
…
I have never covered an agency where the morale was as high, the sense of mission as clear, and the collection of talent as impressive, as the CFPB under Warren. During those years, I spoke with CFPB employees ranging from senior leadership to midlevel lawyers to junior communications staffers, and you couldn’t make it three minutes into those conversations without getting some aphorism from Warren, or anecdote about Warren, quoted back to you. Her ability to inspire not just loyalty but a sense of mission in her staff was unique.
“When we got started on the CFPB adventure, there was no reason that you’d say this law professor will be very good as a chief executive,” says Raj Date, whom Warren attracted to serve as deputy director. “But she was! From a skill set and capability view, it’s all there.”
As Klein reminds us, every politician knows the mantra that “personnel is policy,” but Warren is one of the very few who turn that mantra into action and who do so to further progressive goals. I won’t quote this part here, but he details the way that Warren used her personal power to influence both Obama and (as a candidate) Hillary Clinton in their choices of potential appointees.
Rebuilding the government after 4 years of Trumpian vandalism is going to be crucial. Warren has the chops to get the job done.
Here’s Klein’s conclusion:
She has repeatedly proven her ability to master complex topics, comprehend impenetrable systems, run tricky bureaucracies, recruit and retain excellent staff, build unexpected alliances, persuade the public of what she’s learned, and turn those learnings into power and policy.
The case for Warren, then, is clear: She is simply the best person for the job.
Yes. Yes. Yes.