Elizabeth Warren: Bank Watchdog Who Belongs on Supreme Court

On Monday CNN reported that Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), made the short list of nominees to replace Justice John Paul Stevens.

What a difference a year makes. I called it here on Politics Daily last May, but back then I was dreaming more than predicting.

On Tuesday night Warren appeared on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" to address runaway foreclosures and the indifferent response of the very banks that taxpayers just bailed out to the tune of $700 billion.


Warren pointed out that TARP was supposed to repair the economy at large, not just banks. It was supposed to prevent or at least mitigate layoffs and foreclosures.

We are now 15 months after Treasury has announced its program and tried to get it up and running. And...167,000 families have gotten into some kind of modification...But just to put that in some context, every single month, 200,000 families are posted for foreclosure. That's where we stand right now. 167,000 over 15 months have received assistance under this program. And every month, 200,000 families are posted for foreclosure.

Maddow asked Warren what went wrong. Was the program poorly designed? Are the banks putting up roadblocks?

We raised this issue when the program was first announced...In a sense, what this program was is incentives put on the table to invite the financial institutions and the mortgage servicers to come to the table, please, to negotiate with the families who are facing foreclosure. And it is a program of limited scope, and it is...a gentle program.

And today, we heard from those large Wall Street banks. They went into Congress to testify about where they stood on mortgage foreclosures. And they basically said, "Don't push us too hard because we don't plan to cooperate." This is really a stunning response from large financial institutions. So we just have a real disconnect here about what it is that TARP is supposed to be, or at least originally was supposed to be, about.

At the end of the interview Maddow asked about the Supreme Court.

It's an enormous honor even to have your name mentioned. But right now...I really have my nose hard down in the data on mortgage foreclosures. This is a problem we must fix.

But you know what they say: If you want to get a job done, give it to a busy person.

How did Elizabeth Warren, in just a year's time, go from obscure Harvard law professor and author ("The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke," 2004) to the short list for SCOTUS?

Last year I'd seen her on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," NBC's "Dateline" and HD Net's "Dan Rather Reports."

I also watched, on the oversight panel's YouTube channel, the entire 100-minute video of the March 19, 2009 hearing in Washington, D.C., titled "Learning From the Past -- Lessons from the Banking Crises of the 20th Century."

Warren was not shy about calling out Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for his absence at the sparsely attended hearing that featured live testimony from experts on the Great Depression and the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s as well as Bo Lundgren, Sweden's former deputy minister of finance, who flew all the way from his home country to attend.

In the opening statement, Warren said:

Certainly, the most important person -- the most appropriate person to speak to Treasury's strategy would be the Treasury Secretary, and it had been the strong hope of the Panel to have Secretary Geithner here today to testify. While we understand that he has many pressing concerns right now, it is very disappointing that Secretary Geithner did not make it a priority to be here.

Warren was polite and perfectly composed, but the chill in the air was unmistakable.

Exactly a year ago, on April 15, 2009, Warren landed what is arguably television's most coveted spot -- a guest on Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" (part one of the interview is here and part two is here).

Before I wrote "Elizabeth Warren for the Supreme Court" last May, I googled elizabeth warren + supreme court. Hardly a hit showed up.

Good! I'll be breaking new ground. Or, perhaps -- bad! What if some simple, legal rule made Warren ineligible, and everyone but me knew about it? Lest I embarrass Politics Daily, which had just launched when Justice David Souter announced his intention to retire, I e-mailed the Harvard office of Elizabeth Warren to ask if there was any reason she could not serve on the Supreme Court.

Her reply (relayed through her assistant) was classic Warren -- short, direct and humble: "There is no reason I would be ineligible. I am very grateful that you would think of me this way."

Ultimately, though, it was Sonia Sotomayor who was nominated and confirmed.

Some nine months later it was a more somber Elizabeth Warren who returned to "The Daily Show" on Jan. 26, 2010. She looked worried. She begged viewers to contact their representatives and see to it that banking regulations get restored.

This really is the moment...We are going to write what the American economy looks like for 50 years going forward. And right now, the [Wall Street] CEOs have any real change bottled up in the Senate...If you have never written a senator before, now is the time...This is America's middle class. We've hacked at it and chipped at it and pulled on it for 30 years now, and now there's no more to do. Either we fix this problem going forward, or the game really is over.

Jon Stewart professed, "When you say it like that, and you look at me like that -- I know your husband is back stage. I still want to make out with you."

Is there anyone not in love with this woman? Stewart's valentine to Elizabeth Warren reflects just how hungry we are to have someone speaking up loud and clear on behalf of the average American.

As for the Supreme Court, some people have raised the objection that Warren is an expert on bankruptcy law, not the Constitution. My answer to them would be: Elizabeth Warren is a bright woman, and I'm sure she can get up to speed on just about anything. Furthermore, why would you not want a bankruptcy expert on the Supreme Court in hard times like these?

Some have said Warren is better suited to head the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. This agency may have been the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, but note the word "proposed."

According to boston.com, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) decided it would be a dandy idea to put the agency within the Federal Reserve. But Warren went on record that she's against the creation of a "mush-mouth, meaningless bureaucracy that permits everyone in Congress to pat themselves on the back that they pretended to help families."

Warren is 60 years old, but I've watched her enough times to surmise she's got the guts, energy and drive of a younger woman. I give her another 30 years. In three decades, a whole lot of law will land on the desk of the Supreme Court.

A year ago I wouldn't have bet 50 cents, but now I might be willing to bet the farm that President Obama and Congress will send Ms. Smith to Washington.