Obama's Last Chance

Hanging from the lamp over my dressing table in New Mexico is this remnant of the 2008 Obama campaign: a button that says "Hope."

Like most Americans who voted for Barack Obama, hope sprang eternal that the takeover of our country by multinational corporate interests would be stemmed. It hasn't.

It's been 18 months, and many of us have continued trying to cut the guy some slack. After all, he inherited two wars and the worst economy since The Great Depression. As if that were't enough, he's had to deal with an ecological disaster that has devastated the souteastern portion of the country. I wouldn't want his job.

Nonetheless, in the name of "cooperation" and "bipartisanship," Barack Obama delivered a stimulus package that was too small to stimulate, a healthcare reform law with no healthcare reform in it (and only minimal reform of the health insurance industry) and now a banking reform law that does precious little to reform the financial system. That is, except for one saving provision: The creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is intended to serve as a watchdog to prevent the kinds of deceptive and heavy-handed practices that have driven consumers into bankruptcy, loss of their homes and worse. Probably the most compelling description of the antics of Americas biggest banks can be seen in "Maxed Out," the 2006 feature-length documentary directed by James Scurlock. The movie showcases the lives (and in some cases deaths) of several people who lost everything as a result of our lax credit laws.

One of the featured contributors to "Maxed Out" is a woman by the name of Elizabeth Warren, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School -- where she teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law -- and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel that was created to investigate the U.S. Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which we've all come to know and love as the 2008 Bank Bailout. The idea for a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was hers.

Elizabeth Warren is the strongest candidate that Obama could possibly find to head up this new bureau. Throughout the previous decade, she has been a tireless advocate of control over the heinous practices of the big banks. She would assure that the new bureau would actually offer consumers some protection. So of course, Timothy Geithner doesn't want her anywhere near the job.

The appointment of Timothy Geithner to the post of Treasury Secretary was the first hint to Progressives that Obama either had no intention of bringing about real change, or discovered once he stepped into the Oval Office that he wouldn't be calling the shots. Geithner, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is the quintissential Wall Street insider, the proverbial fox in charge of the chicken coop. Why Obama appointed him is anyone's guess. Perhaps he believed that only an insider could understand the complex machinations of Wall Street sufficiently to bring about reform. Unfortunately, Geithner's familiarity the Street seems to mostly serve the Street. Small wonder that he doesn't want a pesky reformer as head of a new bureau that's supposed to bring about reform.

This presents Barack Obama with what could easily be his last chance to prove to his base that he means business. It goes pretty well without saying that the Senate would never have an opportunity to cast an up or down vote on Warren; a certain fillibuster by Republicans (and ersatz Democrat Ben Nelson) would assure that. However, he can make a "recess" appointment of Warren when our Senators take their little-deserved August vacation. This would preclude a Senate confirmation, at least through the remaining months of the current legislative session, giving Warren an opportunity to organize the new bureau and afford it some teeth.

Obama has yet to show the kind of huevos it would take to do this. However, if he clearly understood that Americans are watching and waiting, just maybe he'd play things a little less "safe" than he has to date. That's why I'm urging anyone who happens past this blog, or others like it, to sign a petition urging him on.

I don't know about my fellow Progessives, but this is my last hope for the man. C'mon, Mr. President: Make us proud of you.