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Elizabeth Warren – selectively smart

By Taylor Armerding
October 26th, 2011


Politicians have all sorts of ways of avoiding questions they don’t like. There’s VP Joe Biden’s recent, “Don’t mess with me,” threat to a reporter. There’s the standard, “That’s a great question … “ followed by an answer or a speech about something entirely off the topic and unresponsive to the question.

But it seems like false humility is gaining some traction too, as in: “I can’t answer your question because I’m not smart enough.”

The Boston Herald reports that Elizabeth Warren, seeking to unseat Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, wasn’t very responsive recently when she was asked by Jim Braude on the Jim & Margery radio show about “the symbolism of President Obama tapping GE president Jeffery Immelt to serve as the head of his jobs council.”

That would be the GE that Warren has railed against for paying “nothing in taxes” and exploiting loopholes pushed by their lobbyists, even though she recently took a $1,000 donation from one of their lobbyists.

“The question of symbolism here is one I’ll leave to people who are smarter than I am,” she said.

Ah, yes – poor, intellectually challenged Elizabeth Warren. This would be Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, former assistant to Obama and special adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury. The former chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversaw the U.S. banking bailout. The one who presumes to instruct us all on why the wealthy should be taxed at rates even more “progressive” than they are now, because “nobody got rich on their own.”

And yes, who has regularly castigated GE as an example of “corporate greed” in her campaign for the Senate.

But, she’s too dumb to comment on Obama selecting a tax-dodging CEO to head his jobs council?

Tell you what, Elizabeth. If that question is too tough for you, maybe you ought to leave being a senator to people who are smarter than you.

Entry Filed under: Better Government, News

2 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Jerold Duquette  |  October 26th, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    I’d say she was dodging the question because it’s impossible to be definitive or objective about “symbolism.” Answers to such questions are hopelessly subjective, somethiing scholars -and politicians- try to avoid occassionally, often with good reason.

    Trying to imply facts not in evidence from something so empirically flimsy that it must be called “symbolic” is hardly admirable.

  • 2. Taylor Armerding  |  October 27th, 2011 at 11:42 am

    Jerold – thanks for the comment. I take your point, but she could have said something like you did, rather than claim she was not smart enough to answer it. I also disagree that in this case – Obama hiring the CEO of a company she has regularly castigated for avoiding taxes – it is “hopelessly subjective” to draw some conclusions from it. She was not being asked to be objective. The things presidents do and say have enormous symbolic, as well as substantive, significance.

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