There is a curious omission in Elizabeth Warren’s 2017 book, “This Fight Is Our Fight.” It comes—or rather, fails to come—after she reveals that in 2015 she briefly considered running for President in the 2016 cycle but quickly forsook the notion. The impression given is that her White House ambitions are so low, and the grief of a national campaign so great, one brief conversation with her husband while watching TV put the idea to rest.
What doesn’t follow in her account is Warren’s far more serious consideration of accepting the second spot on the national Democratic ticket, as Hillary Clinton’s running-mate. Media reports, insider accounts—including Clinton’s—and my own reporting at the time agree that Clinton’s team in Brooklyn was very interested in Warren for the Vice President slot.
And the Massachusetts Senator was apparently open to the possibility: she underwent vetting by the campaign, met with Clinton to discuss it, and spoke in interviews about her readiness for the job if picked. Theories vary as to why Clinton ultimately selected Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, but there is no indication that it was a lack of interest on Warren’s part.
Absolutely none of this is mentioned, even obliquely, in Warren’s book. Clearly, a decision was made to downplay Warren’s national ambitions at the time, perhaps in expectation of wandering-eye accusations in her 2018 U.S. Senate re-election campaign. Hence the scene of Warren and spouse pooh-poohing a Presidential campaign, and nothing about her more eager pursuit of the VP nomination.
That’s a shame—her interest in joining the ticket, and the process she went through, could have been interesting and revealing, especially in light of her official opening of a Presidential Exploratory committee this Monday. Being considered, and rejected, by John McCain in 2008 was one of the more humanizing anecdotes in Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s 2011 book, “Courage To Stand: an American Story.” He painted a fine picture of he and his wife, unstaffed, forms strewn around them, struggling to recall and document obscure details of their past lives; a couple awkwardly poised midway between the hubris of seeking extraordinary power and the humility of being stripped bare and found wanting.
It was a rare sense of authenticity—however calculated it might actually have been—from Pawlenty’s doomed, over-advised, carefully choreographed 2012 Presidential campaign; which lost to Mitt Romney’s over-advised, carefully choreographed campaign.
Warren’s 2020 campaign is already starting to feel the same way. From the book, to her DNA test, to her coordinated foreign policy speech and Foreign Affairs article, and even to Monday’s live Instagram broadcast from the Warren family kitchen, Warren seems less like a candidate and more like a class project in running a campaign.
That might explain why, so far, she is not generating the buzz we know she can.
Unintended Brand
It’s unsurprising that Warren has taken a carefully controlled approach to launching a Presidential campaign.
She did much the same when she ran for Senate in 2012. Entering the primary late, in her first ever run for elected office, Warren hired and trusted consultants who believed in protecting the asset and removing variables from the campaign equation.
Access for the media to candidate Warren was scarce. A field of Democratic Party opponents were systematically eliminated, and support consolidated, to the point that she won more than 95% of delegate votes at the state Democratic convention, leaving her unopposed on the primary ballot. The subsequent one-on-one race against incumbent Republican Scott Brown was conducted in large part via a massive television advertising campaign.
Yet, even within that scripted bubble, Warren’s appeal shone through when given the chance. Her enthusiasm on the trail was infectious; she seemed to absorb energy from adoring crowds. A kick-off listening tour, though obviously strategized to curry party activists who felt snubbed by her drop-in Bigfooting of the primary, convinced attendees that she was the real deal. In debates, even her rehearsed responses revealed her policy passions and intellectual drive.
But since winning that election, it’s been more of the bubble-wrap approach for Warren. She has been notorious for shunning journalists in the Senate hallways, and largely ran a non-campaign in coasting to re-election last year.
At the Presidential campaign level, the impulse to over-control is even greater; and, the ability to connect despite those constraints is more limited.
Running for President is incredibly difficult, and daunting. No first-time candidate really understands what they’re in for; those who believe they know best tend to make the biggest mistakes. For Warren to surround herself with professionals, and to treat herself as a product to be marketed, is a positive sign.
Unfortunately, on the national stage a candidate who tries to do all the right things can quickly gain a reputation—fairly or not—as phony, calculated, and inauthentic.
That’s been happening to Warren. Many in the political press and party activist circles have viewed her actions of the past two years as a series of Presidential candidate boxes dutifully checked: the life-journey book; the foreign policy speech and essay; the tax returns; the well-named bills; the sparring with President Trump. She even announced to journalists that she would begin allowing them to ask her questions in the Senate hallways, in one of the odder, most transparent attempts to feign transparency ever witnessed.
Worst of all were efforts to directly engage with a potential Achilles heel—in her case, the claim of family Cherokee heritage. A speech to the National Congress of American Indians last February was generally well received. Not so her rollout of DNA test results, complete with campaign-style video, in October. It smacked of phoniness, appropriation, and tone-deafness. She came across as a politician saying and doing whatever her consultants and focus groups promised would snooker the voters.
Labels can stick unrelentingly once attached to a politician, and this one has stuck itself onto Warren. Monday, hours after announcing her intent to run for President, she started a live Instagram broadcast in her Cambridge kitchen, uncapped a beer, and spoke unscripted to the public. Warren has been a leader in using social media to connect with rank-and-file Democrats, but with the over-consulted label attached, the video came off to many as a cringe-worthy attempt for the 69-year-old to copy the kitchen-gramming vibe of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Straight Talking
It’s common enough to qualify, I think, as a campaign trope: the over-managed candidate, struggling to gain traction, finally dismisses or ignores the consultants, and in doing so finds the spark that rekindles the campaign.
It’s usually at best an incomplete picture. John Kerry invokes the scenario in his 2018 memoir, to explain his comeback in the 2004 Presidential nomination fight: “I’d found my voice again… in the simple act of getting written off and writing myself back in,” he writes of the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses. He doesn’t mention the likelier role of Dick Gephardt’s self-immolating take-down of Howard Dean.
The best-known example of the genre was ultimately a failure: John McCain’s Straight Talk Express in the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Flailing in polls, and lacking in funds, McCain bet heavily on a stripped-down, largely off-the-cuff New Hampshire bus campaign. He held more than 100 townhalls in the state, and talked openly with reporters for hours on end. He came across as authentic and genuine, and won the New Hampshire primary decisively; that comeback is mythologized in political lore, despite the fact that McCain lost 44 states, and the nomination, to George W. Bush that year.
Still, there is some truth to the “finding your authentic voice” narrative. And it’s possible to envision Warren taking that route in the long coming campaign.
She has very strong assets as a candidate—funding, staff, ideas, and charisma—that should maintain her viability even if she has trouble establishing herself among the frontrunners. As she plugs away, she will learn more about Presidential-level campaigning; determine whose judgments to trust; and gain confidence in her own best instincts.
Then, perhaps, when the media and Democratic voters have cycled through their flirtations with various intriguing but less accomplished flavor-of-the-month candidates, Warren will be prepared to cast aside her consultants, launch her own version of the Straight Talk strategy, and surge to the top of the pack.
Or at least, that’s probably how she’ll describe it in her next book.
