Aubade
Eptless
Monday, 18 July 2011

¶ News that President Obama will nominate Rick Cordray and not Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which Ms Warren more or less invented, is the latest example of White House expertise at pleasing nobody. The Senate is apparently no more likely to confirm Mr Cordray, an activist former attorney general of Ohio who has worked well with Ms Warren, who, for her part, gallantly supports her colleague. What’s the difference? Binyamin Appelbaum writes that Ms Warren’s “independent streak and her outspokenness … put her at odds with the administration.” Maybe that’s another way of saying that, like the President, Mr Cordray is a Midwesterner, if you know what we mean by that.