Over the course of her run for Senate, Elizabeth Warren used one rhetorical punch line seemingly more than any other: “I’ve run exactly one campaign in my life,” she would begin, accompanying her words with sharp jabs of the left hand, “and that was the campaign to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.” Sometimes, she followed with “I’m a lot tougher now than I was when I started that.”
It’s interesting that no matter where she seemed to be in the commonwealth, this line drew similarly healthy applause, whether from hardened union workers, schoolteachers, or wealthy Brookline liberals. The quote, and the raucous cheers it usually garnered, can tell us a lot about Senator Warren, her election, and the people that elected her. Warren was a Harvard intellectual, but one that was able to convince voters that she was on their side – that she was the consumer protector.
Compare this tone to Warren’s more than three years earlier, during her first appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. To me, her appearance that night was better than almost anything I saw on the campaign trail. Warren conveys a sense of tidy academia, punctuated by a comedic lightness that the audience (and even Stewart himself) has a hard time deciphering as a sign of either cool control over financial data and regulatory processes, or a panicked lack thereof. The truth, and the beauty of Warren’s performance, was that it was a bit of both. The TARP program, which Warren was tasked with overseeing, was complex enough to baffle even some in the most qualified economic and legal circles. And yet, there Warren was, taking her time to lay out all of the facts for Stewart and his audience. In a way, this recalled what people loved best about Bill Clinton – he trusted his audience to follow his argument instead of speaking down to them.
This patient pursuit of complex economic and legal arguments seems to be continuing right into Warren’s Senate tenure. The Bible she swore on was practically still warm when Warren released a statement condemning insurance giant AIG’s shareholders for threatening to sue the federal government because of unfavorable bailout terms. Warren didn’t hold back: “Taxpayers across this country saved AIG from ruin, and it would be outrageous for this company to turn around and sue the federal government because they think the deal wasn’t generous enough. […] AIG should thank American taxpayers for their help, not bite the hand that fed them.”
This kind of Wall Street populism certainly isn’t new in Washington, but it is rare to have someone of Warren’s legal caliber spearheading the fight. Senators often use staff resources as a crutch – it’s hard to imagine anyone on Warren’s staff knowing more about financial regulation legislation than she does. Already, a massive popular push has provided Warren with a seat on the exclusive Senate Banking Committee, a position not generally awarded to freshman senators. This appointment may have been Democratic leadership strengthening their hold on a Senate seat after a hard fought battle, but more likely, it was the acknowledgement that Warren is simply more qualified than almost any other sitting senator on these issues.
As she begins her time in the Senate, the same characteristics that brought her there in the first place– a complete mastery of the law and the uncanny ability to boil it down to its rugged essentials, a folksy accent that can pierce through CSPAN into any living room in America, a steady cadence that belies a fiery intensity – promise to leave a large footprint on Washington, no matter how big the shoes she’s filling.
Photo Credit: Tim Pierce, Flickr
© 2024 Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved.