John Nichols: Elizabeth Warren May Not Be Ready to Run for President, but Her Book Is

http://www.thenation.com/blog/179494/elizabeth-warren-may-not-be-ready-run-president-her-book?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign

The measures of books written by politicians are never simply literary.

Books written by the women and men who might, maybe, just possibly run for president are invariably judged by electoral standards.

So it is that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s fine new book, A Fighting Chance, will be assessed both for its composition and for its potential to spark the popular uprising that might make a reasonably populist Democrat a contender for the presidency, the vice presidency or a top cabinet post in a next administration.

Warren says she is not running for president in the 2016 Democratic nomination contest that too many pundits have already decided will be won by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—just as they had already decided the 2008 nomination fight for Clinton. Warren’s statements have been consistent in that regard. On the CBS Sunday Morning program this week, she was pressed repeatedly on the issue. “I’m not running for president,” Warren reiterated, cutting her interviewer off with a warning that “you can ask it lots of different ways” and still get the same answer.

Warren has a reputation as a straight shooter. But even straight shooters have been known to resist entreaties to seek the presidency, or to accept an invitation to join a national ticket, right up to the point at which they hear the siren call.

Candidates and potential candidates write books for two reasons. At their worst, they seek merely to advance their own ambitions. At their best, they seek to frame the debate—not necessarily with a precise platform; often with an ably developed premise, as was the case with the two best-selling books that a young Barack Obama wrote before launching a presidential bid that in its early stages was grounded at least in part on a stack of favorable reviews.