Genealogy has become a popular American pastime, but it’s not one that Elizabeth Warren seems to be enjoying. The law professor turned Democratic Senate candidate has discovered to her displeasure that more attention is being paid to her somewhat tenuous claim to Native American ancestry and the use her academic employers made of this fiction than her attempt to defeat Massachusetts incumbent Scott Brown. The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta has compiled all the available evidence on the matter and found some facts that will comfort Warren and others that her critics will promote. But even after we have gotten to the bottom of this — and Franke-Ruta appears to have done so — that won’t solve her problem. Warren’s dilemma is more pressing than merely the irony of a “progressive” hoisted on the petard fashioned by the left.
Warren is vulnerable on this score not just because it is amusing to see a liberal squirm after being called out for masquerading as a minority. Rather it is the fact that she’s a relative newcomer to politics and this controversy is helping to define her. Though she’s right that this is a distraction from the issues, having entered the public imagination as the object of popular scorn in this fashion, it’s going to be difficult for her to shake this image of faux Indian in the next six months.
A fraudulent item in a biography can be a devastating blow to a political career, but it doesn’t have to be fatal, as one prominent example shows.
Just two years ago, a U.S. Senate race in neighboring Connecticut might well have been defined by such an issue. Democratic nominee Richard Blumenthal was caught on something far worse than Warren’s belief that she was 1/32 Cherokee based on family lore and her grandfather’s high cheekbones. Blumenthal was caught on tape lying about having served in Vietnam. That’s more than just fibbing on a resume or treating family myths as fact. It’s about as low as you can get. Yet Blumenthal still breezed to victory and today sits in the U.S. Senate alongside a few members who actually did serve in Vietnam and does so without blushing.
Blumenthal was lucky to run in a blue state like Connecticut and he was even more fortunate that his opponent, pro wrestling mogul Linda McMahon (who is having another crack at the Senate this year as she seeks to replace the retiring Joe Lieberman) was widely seen as disreputable. But even with those favorable circumstances, the lie might have ended Blumenthal’s hopes but for one factor: he was a familiar and well-liked figure in the state. Having spent the previous 20 years running for and winning state-wide office as the longtime attorney general, it was easy for him to ask forgiveness from those who had already gotten to know and respect him. As a political novice, Warren can’t fall back on that same sense of trust.
As Franke-Ruta writes, there’s no evidence she used her fake Indian ancestry to gain entrance to schools or to win professorial posts. But her foolish determination to stick to her claim about having Native American heritage — even after, as Franke-Ruta also determines — it became clear there is virtually no likelihood of it being true has given the story legs. And because the story solidified her public identity as the product of the academy rather than as an activist, it has helped turn this election into a town versus gown affair that is very much to her disadvantage.
Entering the public consciousness as a fraud, even a penny-ante fraud such as her mythical Cherokee forebears, may be a far greater burden for a politician to carry than even the revelation of a lie that is a case of moral turpitude as was true of Blumenthal. Unless Warren can fundamentally redefine the way voters think about her in the coming months, it appears the Democrats’ hope of retaking Ted Kennedy’s old seat was lost on the “Trail of Tears,” and not in Massachusetts.
"But even with those favorable circumstances, the lie might have ended Blumenthal’s hopes but for one factor: he was a familiar and well-liked figure in the state." n nBlumenthal got away with his despicable fib because most Democrats could care less if their candidates lie. Telling the truth is not particularly important to them. They approach it in a postmodernist manner. The Democratic Party changed for the worse after McGovern got clobbered in 1972. The "elites" took over—and they lie without batting an eyelash.
Thus far we have 1) a claim to NA status with no proof, 2) a hardscrabble child hood that was comfortably middle class and 3) a horribly named cookbook with at least 3 plagiarized recipes by Elizabeth Warren, Cherokee. None of these are big issues by themselves, but Ms. Warren cuts corners. I expect something else will surface.
The very strong Democratic tilt in Massachusetts leaves Warren's defeat anything but a foregone conclusion. To be sure, in an off year election Brown might be cruising to a somewhat comfortable (though by no means landslide) win but in the presidential context this is likely to be very much a nail bitter.
Either Franke-Ruta is trying to cover for Warren or she isn't too bright. n nEmployment laws in this country have pretty much insured that certain things are never asked about on an application for employment nor asked in any interview…. you know what political party are you a member of, are you married, what race are you… those things just don't get answered. n nWhat does happen though, is that a company or university that is trying to hire a more diverse workforce will look for candidates in places where they will find that diversity. That will never show up in the employees file as it was simply the first part of a hiring process that didn't focus on a particular individual. n nIn the case of Warren the most likely thing that occurred is that Harvard wanted to have a more diverse faculty (very likely if you look at the history of Harvard Law in the 1990's) and so they likely put someone in charge of finding some suitable candidates to achieve that goal. That person looked in a directory that listed Native American lawyers/scholars and Warren was one of the names that popped up. She would never have had to check a box on the application at that point because she had already checked the box for the directory… so while she lied to get in she did it in a very clever way that befits a lawyer – she lied in a place that didn't care, and knew it would carry over to the place where she couldn't lie. n nThink back to the movie Soul Man where a white man passes himself off as a black man to get a scholarship to Harvard Law, in that movie we saw who the victim was when the movie showed us the woman that was denied a scholarship the white man had wrongfully taken… In this case we still have a victim somewhere, but we will simply never know who it was.
Predictable as the night following the day was Andrew Rosenthal, Editorial page editor of the NYTimes, rushing to Elizabeth Warren's defense. Mr. Rosenthal tweeted that Warren's ethnicity is irrelevant. "Who cares?" Mr. Rosenthal tweeted. The issue, of course, is not whether Elizabeth Warren is partCherokee. The issue is that she has lied about it for so many years. Would Mr. Rosenthal been so blase if Scott Brown had been caught calling himself a Native American? Not a chance. Mr. Rosenthal and Maureen Dowd would have savaged Senator Brown. There would be so many sarcastic opeds and editorials that Brown would be forced from the race. Once the NYTimes decides someone must be done away is, the hometown Boston Globe is happy to pile on. n
She's a Democrat,so she will lie and buy her way in. Then she will be treated as dirt,like Dems treat all women.
You never know, maybe she'll become a squeeze of some Kennedy scion.
"As Franke-Ruta writes, there’s no evidence she used her fake Indian ancestry to gain entrance to schools or to win professorial posts." n nFirstly this relies on the evaluation of evidence by a writer for the Atlantic which is anything but neutral in the political arena. And secondly it requires the belief that she never benefitted even though the school that paid her salary touted her fake racial status.
Lying, plagiarism, weak scholarship – all plusses on a liberal curriculum vitae.