The Post has an extensive profile of Elizabeth Warren today, which I suppose indicates they expect her to get the consumer agency job. I still believe that even if she gets the appointment, the agency will be stacked with people who will be working against her:
The administration has floated several candidates for the job, including Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael S. Barr and Eugene Kimmelman, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. But Warren has drawn the most public support — and the most ire.
She has received fervent backing from consumer advocates, labor unions, academics and scores of Democratic lawmakers. Tens of thousands of people have signed online petitions urging Obama to choose her. Her endorsements have ranged from the New York Times to MoveOn.org to Dr. Phil.
Others have made no secret about their distaste for Warren, questioning her qualifications and describing her as an ideologue.
“I get disgusted every time I hear her speak. It’s like she’s sitting in some ivory tower, not understanding the ramifications of anything she says,” Anton Schutz, president of Mendon Capital Advisors, recently told Reuters — a sentiment shared by others in the financial industry, though rarely so candidly. “Any person you put in that role really ought to have some industry experience.”
For her part, Warren has spent much of the summer outside of the public spotlight, declining interview requests and visiting family in California and Oklahoma.
“I asked her point-blank, ‘Do you want this grubby job or not? Why do you want this thing?’ ” her brother David Herring said. He said it was clear that if she were to end up leading the consumer bureau, it would be out of a sense of duty.
Warren’s daughter and co-author on two books, Amelia Warren Tyagi, agreed that her mother has little appetite for politics or public life, and only her passion for consumer issues and the urgency of the crisis have kept her from returning to her quiet, tenured life at Harvard.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment to do the thing she cares about most,” Tyagi said. “If she didn’t think she could make a difference in Washington right now, she wouldn’t be there.”
