To the editor:
Elizabeth Warren should be the next president of the United States.
Her first goal, to make the government work for everyone rather than for well-funded insiders, will lead a Democratic sweep that will make reform — big structural change — possible.
Electing a president means hiring someone for the job description in the Constitution: to administer national laws, to appoint judges and top officials, to manage the bureaucracy, to propose and approve new laws and regulations, to command the military. Electing a president also means choosing someone to represent us and the nation as a leader. Thus, in addition to the capacity to do the things in the job description, we voters should care about character, temperament, experience and vision.
Character and temperament are revealed, or perhaps were formed, in Warren’s decades-long career in teaching. By all reports, she was a great teacher: patient, persistent, understanding but demanding. In public appearances she is composed, passionate, sincere and sensible. Her many announced plans for reform show how she tackles a problem: study the evidence; consult people who know about the issue; explore options and complications; set out a coherent, comprehensive program of action and explain it in terms that everyone can understand.
Experience matters. Warren has shared the life experiences of many Americans, from an economically precarious childhood and public school to early marriage and family. She ended up at Harvard, but her path there started at a commuter college and a state law school. Experience in public service is critical: No one who lacks public service experience should ever again even be considered for the presidency. Voters should be able to see how candidates have actually made decisions about matters of public interest, and candidates should know firsthand what it takes to get things done in a constitutional government subject to the rule of law. In addition to years as a legal expert, Warren’s experience with public service includes a decade promoting reforms of national laws about bankruptcy and consumer finance capped by chairing the congressional panel that oversaw Obama’s post-recession rescue program, and now eight years in the Senate.
Vision is informed by experience. Warren’s first priority is to clean out the corrupting influence of money on government. As an expert in corporate law and financial regulation, she knows where the bodies — or at least the assets — are buried. In advocating, creating and launching the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren had to confront and overcome the moneyed interests that resist reform. Warren is ambitious about big structural change to make the government work for everyone. Her signature proposal is for a federal “property tax” on extremely large fortunes: 2 cents per dollar over $50 million would pay for the programs she has proposed to help people who are struggling.
Warren can make change happen. She is a good communicator. She knows how to move the bureaucracy: She has a lifetime collection of contacts and a shrewd capacity to enlist talent. And as a senator, she understands the need to work with the Legislature, knowing that much of what needs to be done will require Congress to help. She is tactically adept, quick on her feet and a terrific debater.
Warren will not only unify the Democrats, but she will also appeal to independents and good-government traditional Republicans. Warren’s ideas are squarely in the reforming progressive tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, calling not for revolution but for oversight, regulation and law enforcement to ensure that markets work for everyone.
For the second time in recent history, the presidential candidate who is most capable of doing the job is a woman. I’ll support whomever the Democrats nominate, because the most important task is to rid the White House of Der Furor. But Elizabeth Warren is the best.
Michael Wise
Great Barrington
The writer is the chair of the Great Barrington Democratic Town Committee but is not writing here on its behalf.
