Elizabeth Warren’s moral insight: How candid leaders can alter the course of history

[DonViejo]

Far from accept that the powerful implicitly deserve their social position, true leaders prize the general welfare

ANDREW BURSTEIN AND NANCY ISENBERG

What is America thinking? professional pollsters ask, day by day, week by week. The assumption is that opinions express the “reality” that those in the “bubble” somehow don’t get, because they’re ostensibly out of touch with the “real” America. The underlying premise is that democracy profits from any and all contact with the average citizen — that precious slice of real America.

But this modern twist on the Jeffersonian principle of listening to the modest, decent, hard-working, informed voter is less meaningful than it ought to be. We live in an America, and in political times, in which almost no attention at all is paid to the quality of information that voters possess. Polls fool us into believing that ideas matter. Polls are a mirage.

Ideas should matter. They should triumph over the blind course set by ideologues and demagogues, and the weak-minded elected officials who rationalize inaction and justify inertia. This explains why those who implicitly sense what American political culture is missing adore Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for the clear-headed, no-nonsense critique she provides. “We all do better when we all do better,” her official website reads. The real purpose of republican government must be to help as many people as possible; that is what distinguishes the republican form from the autocratic. (And that, by the way, is the principle that the Affordable Care Act is meant to embody.)

Back in 2010, Warren responded to an interviewer’s question about the impact of the big banks’ outsized misbehavior: “I would have expected the financial crisis to sweep through Wall Street like a hundred-year flood–wiping out old business practices and changing the ecology profoundly. So far, the financial services industry has seemed to treat the crisis like a little rainfall – inconvenient, but no significant changes needed…. Will [the industry] react to all the new cops on the beat just by hiring more lobbyists? Will it continue to spend $1.4 million a day to beat back anything that could mean more accountability and oversight? Or will the financial services industry finally begin to rethink its business models, lobbying approach, and attitude toward the public?” We all know the answer.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/12/12/elizabeth_warrens_moral_insight_how_candid_leaders_can_alter_the_course_of_history/