Rospars was responsible for positioning Warren to the electorate. If you asked me to identify Elizabeth Warren’s talents as a politician, I would simply say that she’s a fighter. Witness her performance in hearings that would so damage the reputations of (mostly) male financial titans that they would quickly resign in disgrace. She fought the Obama administration whenever it strayed from putting the public interest over the interests of financiers. The fights displayed her first principles: a populist champion of the little guy, battling a rigged system.
Under Rospars, Warren decided to highlight how she had a very nice golden retriever. “They chose ... Bailey over ‘blood and teeth,’” said one anonymous staffer to Politico, referring to an old quote where Warren said she would rather have no Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor” than a weak agency. Several staffers complained that Rospars tried to soften Warren’s edges, make her less polarizing, and generally erase the thing that made her a political rock star in the first place. Campaigns that express a fear of letting the candidate act like the candidate rarely succeed.
In place of this, Rospars highlighted Warren’s plans, white papers that are relatively common in presidential campaigns. The focus on policy was admirable, and did have an initial impact. But it eventually started to blur together; by the end, new plans were being fashioned out of bits and pieces of old plans so the campaign could say they had a new plan.