Keller @ Large: Elizabeth Warren's Rookie Mistake
BOSTON (CBS) - Very few of the problems confronting our elected officials in Washington appear to have easy, obvious solutions.
If they did, even those guys could have solved them by now.
And one of the most complicated problems of them all is higher education: the soaring cost of it, the overwhelming demand for it, and the scary trillion-dollar debt bubble created by all the borrowing we've done to get it.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
Keller at Large July 19 2013
It's a tough, complex issue, with urgent implications for the social mobility, economic fairness and fiscal health of our country.
I don't have any snappy answers to it.
But after watching Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrestle with it over the last few months, I'm pretty sure her approach isn't the way forward.
Warren has a great point when she rails against spending priorities that devalue education. I agree with her that I'd rather help kids go to college than squander money on corporate welfare and war.
But Warren blundered when she took to the Senate floor Thursday to denounce a bi-partisan deal to roll back recent student-loan interest rate hikes that had already been cut.
She disingenuously blamed only Republicans for it when it has bi-partisan and presidential support.
That prompted an unusual rebuke from her fellow Democrat and ally Dick Durbin of Illinois, who chastised her for ignoring the political reality that forced the compromise and dismissing positive aspects of the deal.
Let's be generous and call this a rookie mistake.
But Senator, the campaign is over. You won.
It's time to start legislating, which means prioritizing compromise, coalition-building, and taking half a loaf and coming back for the other half later, instead of harshly partisan, campaign-style rhetoric that alienates your own colleagues.
You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.
