Amid the financial crisis, Warren had become an unlikely star of the left with unambiguous moral outrage and an ability to explain complex financial topics in ways that made them fodder for dinner-table conversation. Improbably, she had turned a largely powerless congressional panel monitoring the bank bailout into a national bully pulpit of populist fury. Her target was not just the big banks but the new Democratic administration, which she suggested had been co-opted by them.
She parlayed her newfound status into a push for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. As the legislation was about to pass in June of 2010, Warren met with presidential adviser David Axelrod and was blunt: She wanted Obama to nominate her to run the agency or she could continue probing the Treasury’s every move.
“I took it as a message; I think she meant it as one,” Axelrod says. Warren sent the signal that she could either be inside the tent pissing out or outside pissing in, Axelrod says, quoting a vivid Lyndon B. Johnson quip.
Other Obama administration officials call her a “professional critic,” “sanctimonious,” and a “condescending narcissist.” One former Treasury aide puts it this way: “We’re with Barack. We’re the liberals. Why are you pissing in our face?”
