Ralph Nader: Obama is a "Political Coward" For Not Appointing Elizabeth Warren

DemocracyNow.org - After months of fierce opposition from Wall Street, corporate lobbyists and Republican lawmakers, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officially launches this week in Washington, D.C. A product of last year's overhaul of financial regulation, the Bureau was established to protect consumers from deceptive practices. Republicans have sought to weaken its reach with a number of restrictive measures, including granting other regulatory bodies veto power over the bureau's decisions. This week, Republicans scored another victory with President Obama's announcement of his choice to head the bureau. Obama has tapped former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray instead of Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor who first proposed the bureau and has overseen its establishment for the past year. Democracy Now! interviews Ralph Nader, a longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate. "[Cordray] is no Elizabeth Warren. He doesn't have her communication skills," says Nader. "She is a rare find and by throwing her overboard, Obama has signaled to hundreds of good smart people who would like to turn out government around and make it stand for the people."

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AMY GOODMAN: After months
of fierce opposition from Wall Street,

corporate lobbyists,
and mostly Republican lawmakers,

the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau

officially launches
in Washington this week.

A product of last year’s
overhaul of financial regulation,

the bureau was established
to protect consumers

from deceptive practices.

Republicans have sought
to weaken its reach

with a number of
restrictive measures,

including granting
other regulatory bodies veto power

over the bureau’s decisions.

This week Republicans
scored another victory

with President Obama’s announcement
of his choice to head the bureau.

Obama has tapped former Ohio Attorney
General Richard Cordray

instead of Elizabeth Warren,

the Harvard professor
who first proposed the bureau

and has overseen
its establishment for the past year.

Warren had been the choice
of many progressive organizations,

but her nomination was
strongly opposed

by Republican lawmakers
and the banking industry.

Flanked by Warren,
Cordray and Treasury Secretary

Timothy Geithner,

President Obama said he’s confident
in his choice to head the bureau.

BARACK OBAMA: I am proud
to nominate Richard Cordray

to this post.

And we’ve been

recently reminded why this job
is going to be so important.

There is an army of lobbyists
and lawyers right now

working to water down
the protections and the reforms

that we passed.

They’ve already spent tens
of millions of dollars this year

to try to weaken the laws that are
designed to protect consumers.

And they’ve got allies in Congress

who are trying to undo the progress
that we’ve made.

We’re not going to let that happen.

I will fight any efforts
to repeal or undermine

the important changes that we passed,

and we are going to stand up
this bureau and make sure

it is doing the right thing
for middle-class families

all across the country.

Middle-class families and seniors
don’t have teams of lawyers

from blue-chip law firms.

They can’t afford to hire a lobbyist
to look out for their interests.

But they deserve
to be treated honestly.

They deserve a basic measure
of protection against abuse.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking
shortly afterwards on MSNBC,

Elizabeth Warren said
she also supports Obama’s decision

to nominate Cordray.

ELIZABETH WARREN: Oh, let’s
be clear here.

I’ve had a chance
to see this thing come to light.

And Richard Cordray
is one of the first people

I recruited to be part
of the team to stand it up.

He’s tough.
He’s smart.

It’s exactly what we need.

It’s a new chapter
for the consumer agency,

and I couldn’t be more proud.

AMY GOODMAN: Elizabeth Warren
has left open the possibility

of a Senate run
in her home state of Massachusetts,

where she would take
on Republican Senator Scott Brown,

but said she has to go home
to Massachusetts first

and think outside of the Beltway.

For more
on President Obama’s decision

to overlook Elizabeth Warren,

we’re joined from Washington, D.C.,
by Ralph Nader,

longtime consumer advocate,
corporate critic

and former presidential candidate.

Welcome to Democracy Now!,
Ralph Nader.

What are your thoughts
on the passing over

of Elizabeth Warren?

RALPH NADER: Well,
our spineless president

speaks again with a forked tongue.

He talks about a tough agency,
and he’s just thrown overboard

the toughest federal cop
on corporate crime, fraud and abuse

against millions of Americans’
pensions and savings,

and then tries to convince people
that he’s really being tough

against Wall Street.

He’s basically a political coward.

And the problem with that
is not just

detonating Elizabeth Warren’s career
culmination of heading the agency

that she conceived and built
out of the Treasury Department

in the last few months,

but he’s signaling once again
to the rogue Republicans in Congress

that he has no backbone,
that he’s going to cave.

And that’s what he’s been doing.

He threw Van Jones overboard,

because Glenn Beck attacked—

of all people—

attacked Van Jones,
his assistant in the White House.

He doesn’t stand by his people,

unless these people stand
for Wall Street,

like William Daley,
Timothy Geithner,

Larry Summers.

You’d think he’d give
at least one post—

one post—
to the consumer constituency,

the liberals and progressives,
that brought him to the White House.

But that is not the way
he calculates it.

You know, he’s in trouble politically
in the minds of some people.

Bill Curry, who was
a special assistant to Clinton,

very astute political observer
in Connecticut,

said recently that if Romney
is the candidate,

Romney will take over 46 states,
including Connecticut.

So, some people think
that he’s making a strategic

and tactical mistake
by constantly turning his back

on the people—minorities,
poor people—never mentions the poor,

you notice that?

Geez, there are only
60 million people

living in grinding poverty
in this country.

He mentions the shrinking
middle class.

So this has a lot of ramifications,
Amy, as to what he did.

But one aspect of it
should not be ignored,

and that’s sexism.

The Treasury Department
is full of ex-Wall Street males.

It’s an old boys’ club.

And they don’t like an uppity woman
who happens—

in Theresa Amato’s words,

an article on the Washington Post
web yesterday,

Theresa Amato’s words—

having a woman
who has both brains and backbone,

and instead of getting the job,
she gets the pink slip.

And there are people on Capitol Hill
who have told me recently

there is not
a little sexism involved here.

And that’s another shame
on Barack Obama.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk,
Ralph Nader,

about why you think Elizabeth Warren
should have been appointed?

What is her background?

How did she come to be so involved
with setting up this consumer bureau?

RALPH NADER: Well, she starts
with a blue-collar family in Oklahoma,

and she never forgets that.

They worked with their hands.
They worked hard.

And she comes up
and becomes a tenured professor at

Harvard Law School,

one of the nation’s leading experts
on bankruptcy,

and clearly the nation’s
leading expert

on consumer finance
and all the abuses

people who have credit cards
and have to hook into payday loans

and rent-to-own loan rackets
and who’ve lost their homes

because of fine print in mortgages,
etc.—

she is the nation’s expert on this.

She comes to Washington
at the request of Harry Reid

to head a special congressional
oversight entity,

pursuant to the Wall Street
collapse and bailout,

does a sterling job,

has a heavy cross-examination
of Timothy Geithner in public.

He didn’t like that,
and he never forgot that.

And she is—

then finds herself in Treasury,

wondering whether she’s going
to be the new head of this agency,

which passed as part of the
Dodd-Frank bill.

And it turns out that she
was allowed to build it.

She recruited very competent people
in the agency.

I think it sets the standard
for American consumer protection,

in terms of competent staff.

And then she wants the job.

Everybody knows she wants the job.

But listen to how this coward
in the White House

handled it yesterday.

He said, "Elizabeth Warren,

you’ve done a great job
building this agency,

and one of your charges
was to find a director.

And you have found a great director,
Richard Cordray." Imagine.

He puts the words in her mouth,
when he knows very well

that she wanted this job
as the culmination of her career.

And it’s too bad that
the leading women’s organization,

such as NOW and
[Feminist] Majority and others,

did not take a strong stand,

because this was a legitimate
women’s issue,

not just a consumer issue.

There was sexism involved here.

They’re too involved
in other things,

and they didn’t take
a strong stand for her

on behalf of
all the working women in America,

many of them poor,
many of them chief candidates

for continued Wall Street ripoffs
and crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: What about,
Ralph Nader,Cordray?

What about his background
and where you think

he’ll take the agency?

RALPH NADER: Well, I think
it remains to be seen.

When he was in the
Ohio attorney general’s office

in 2004,

before he became attorney general,

he was in charge of signing off
on ways to get me off the ballot

when I was running for president.

And they did get me off the ballot
in a very disreputable manner.

But as attorney general,
he was pretty good.

So, let’s put it this way:
he’s a work in progress.

But he’s no Elizabeth Warren.

He doesn’t have her
communication skills.

She’s a superb communicator.

And I hope we’ll hear from her
in the future,

whether politically
or in some other position.

She is a rare find.

And by throwing her overboard,
Obama has signaled

to hundreds of good,
smart people all over the country,

who would like to turn
our government around

and make it stand for the people,
that they may be too good

for the president, they may be
too good for the rogue Republicans.

And so, in that sense,
it has a ripple effect,

that’s a very negative message
to a possible resurgence

of the quality
of political appointees

in Washington,

as well as the civil service,

that’s begging for quality
political appointee leadership.