Elizabeth Warren is having a bad time right now. The facts have caught up with the dialogue. For a politician that is never a good thing (well, sometimes it is, if they are telling the truth!). I probably should mention at this point that I live in Massachusetts, will be voting for Scott Brown, and made a small donation to his campaign (considering the name of this website, that should not be a surprise).
In regard to the Indian claim, it really would have remained simply an item of family lore to have fun with if she hadn’t checked off a few boxes on her way to her current position. Every family has its urban legend–that’s part of the fun of being a family–but you are not supposed to try to advance your career by claiming whatever urban legend your family embraces.
Ms. Warren has a larger problem with truth and image in this campaign. On Tuesday, the Washington Examiner posted an article which included some of Ms. Warren’s employment history.
The article reports:
In addition to the story about Warren’s minority claims, the Boston Globe reported that Warren had a lucrative consulting job with Travelers Insurance in which she helped the company stop asbestos-related lawsuits, work that conflicts with her image as a consumer protection advocate who was once tapped to head the federal government’s newly created Consumer Protection Agency.
“I think the Native American story will pass,” University of Massachusetts political science professor Maurice Cunningham said. “But it’s a little hard to make the case you are purely for the consumer when you are working for Travelers Insurance.”
There are actually two disturbing things about the Travelers Insurance story. First, I understand that insurance companies (like any other business) are in business to make money, but that does not give them the right to try to squelch legitimate claims–if the asbestos-related lawsuits were legitimate and not over-the-top, there should have been no effort to stop them. If they were lawsuits where the lawyers made the money and the victims made little or nothing, they should have been stopped. (Tort reform, anyone?) Second, unless Ms. Warren can explain why she worked to stop the lawsuits, her credibility as a consumer advocate is about the same as her credibility as an Indian.
