Politicians can proclaim their disinterest in an office all they want, especially president, but until the deadline passes – or they stop talking and acting like a candidate – they will be included in the conversations.
Such is the case for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has continually declared she will serve out her term as senator and has “no plans” to run to run for the White House. But as any pundit worth his or her weight will tell you, “have no plans” is different from “ain’t gonna happen.” In the eyes of political observers on both sides of the spectrum, Warren has gone from looking like a duck to walking like a duck to, with the impending release of her memoirs, quacking like a duck. The Boston Globe got an advanced copy of Warren’s memoirs and some of the anecdotes the paper reveals are revealing, to say the least.
Warren’s releasing a book is no big news. She has authored or co-authored at least nine other books, though mostly dry tomes on bankruptcy law, credit, banking, and the crunch on the middle class. But her latest effort due out next week, titled A Fighting Chance, is her first attempt at a personal peek inside the world of Elizabeth Warren, from her familiar declaration of her upbringing on the “ragged edge” of the middle class to her failed first marriage while trying to get her footing in academia to her tense encounters with President Obama and his top economic aides that are replete with sexist overtones and the boys trying to put the girl in her place.
In the world of presidential politics, an autobiography, especially one chronicling a climb to the top with a clash with gender and political insiderism, sets the stage for someone to set herself apart and define herself before others get a chance. Though Warren was forged by the fire of Massachusetts politics in her run against Scott Brown, she’s still relatively unknown on the wider national stage save for the true believers on the left who are drooling for her to carry the torch and the staunch conservatives on the right who see her as Ted Kennedy incarnate.
In a way she was unable to articulate on the Senate campaign trail, Warren grabs hold of the narrative over the controversy of her claims of Native American ancestry. She states simply that it was part of the family oral history growing up, not unlike many other Oklahomans who could trace Native American blood in their family trees.
“I never questioned my family’s stories or asked my parents for proof or documentation. What kid would?,” Warren writes, insisting she never used her bloodlines to advance her career by claiming minority status and bemoaning the attacks on her by Brown and his supporters. “But knowing who you are is one thing, and proving who you are is another.”
Warren also shows some spine in standing up to Obama, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, economic advisor and former Harvard president Larry Summers, as well as other administration members. Warren recounts one conversation with an unnamed aide after she was told Obama would not nominate her to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that she shaped and set up. She was told she should act as a “cheerleader” for the new panel, a term that did not sit well.
“I assume that was meant as a metaphor, but I had to wonder: Cheerleader?” Warren writes. “Would the same suggestion have been made to a man in my position? I did not rush out to buy pom-poms.”
The Globe also reveals that the original title of the book was Rigged but was changed to A Fighting Chance to offer a more optimistic tone. Warren will embark on a tour to accompany the release of the book, making stops in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. That they also happen to be Democratic strongholds is lost on few.
“It’s not the book that would have been on the syllabus for her Harvard Law School class,” Bay State native Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant, tells the Globe. If she runs, he said, “it will be on the syllabus of every reporter covering the presidential election in 2016.”
In other words: Duck, here comes Warren.
–JACK SULLIVAN
BEACON HILL
A federally-funded watchdog group is beginning an investigation of alleged abuse and mistreatment of inmates at Bridgewater State Hospital.
Gov. Deval Patrick defends a deal to add a pension bump and a pay raise to Massachusetts Turnpike toll takers as part of a plan to eliminate toll booths by 2016, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
A state Senate oversight panel looking into several botched IT operations by state government isn’t liking what it’s finding.
The House unanimously passed a bill that would create tax exemptions for families of children with intellectual disabilities allowing them to create tax-free savings accounts for future care and support.
Lawmakers pitch fairly timid steps to reduce the cost of college.
MARATHON BOMBING
Boston minister Laura Everett asks some inconvenient questions about the meaning of “Boston strong.”
Telegram and Gazette columnist Dianne Williamson offers some thoughts on post-bombing coverage and the focus on survivors that would trigger cries of heresy if it was printed in a Boston paper.
Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev protest restrictions at the Federal Medical Center in Ayer, which they say are hampering their ability to provide him with a defense.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh reflects on his first 100 days in office, NECN reports. CommonWealth’s Paul McMorrow writes that he couldn’t help thinking that the new mayor sounds a lot like the old mayor.
Walsh is refusing to disclose the terms of a tentative contract agreement the city reached with firefighters, prompting criticism from the city watchdog backed by business interests.
Boston police mourn officer Dennis Simmonds.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Southern Idaho’s Magic Valley aggressively recruits food companies, trying to be to food production what Silicon Valley is to the tech industry, Governing reports.
President Obama and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor bicker over immigration and/or Passover greetings.
ELECTIONS
Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker talks income inequality in Salem, the Salem News reports. Baker also drops in on Dorchester.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Grossman today plans to debate Jim Wallace, the head of the Gun Owners Action League, on the State House steps. On Blue Mass Group, a Grossman backer tries to juice the turnout for the sidewalk showdown.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Federal agents raided the Marlborough offices of TelexFree, an Internet telephone company that may have been luring immigrant investors into one of the largest international financial frauds ever, the Globe reports.
EDUCATION
The Atlantic dives deep into the resegregation of public education in the South.
HEALTH CARE
A state health policy oversight panel says Lahey Health‘s proposed acquisition of Winchester Hospital is likely to lead to reduced health care costs.
TRANSPORTATION
Compared to two years ago, when a combination of fare hikes and service cuts was met with angry resistance, only a handful of commuters showed up in Braintree yesterday at the first of 10 public hearings on a proposed MBTA fare increase.
The first of 40 new commuter rail locomotives is rolled out.
Lynn is to receive $1.7 million in road repair funds, the Item reports.
MGM Springfield chips in big bucks for the redevelopment of the city’s Union Station.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Fairhaven officials have approved single-stream recycling, hoping to increase the town’s dismal 14 percent recycling rate and trying to ward off the “last resort” of a pay-as-you-throw system.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The Fall River harbormaster has been charged with larceny after he allegedly removed items from a building city officials ordered to be boarded up.
MEDIA
ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity get into a nasty squabble over whether the center is hogging the credit for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
The Bay State Banner skewers Rev. Eugene Rivers and Boston’s “white mainstream media thirst for controversy.”