For those who don’t know this already, Elizabeth Warren is the fine woman who has been giving President Barack Obama some gold-plated advice over the last two years. Only trouble is, the Prezz hasn’t been listening to it hard enough.

Ms Warren is a ruthless interrogator of Wall Street insanity and its moral hazards. She has been touted for months now as the best (nay, only) viable candidate to head up Obama’s much-heralded financial consumer protection agency, the CPFB. But Barack Obama still can’t make his mind up about the hiring. He’s ‘mulling it over’ according to the US media. But this is turning into a mullathon.

I heard a fascinating anecdote from a minor Obaman last week. This person told me how The US President was first told that taxpayer-saved bankers were already lining up their annual bonuses of $zillion-zillion before the ink was dry on the bailouts. Apparently, even Mr Cool blinked in bewilderment before launching into a rant that began, “Are you seriously telling me….”

That story related, it remains true that Obama has been woefully conservative in his choice of advisers about what to do with the US financial community. It seems odd that he hired members of the Hellfire Club, and yet somehow expected they’d tell him that America needed to sweep the place clean of sadists.

The Huffington Post site has an excellent piece today about who gets into Geithner’s diary and who doesn’t. The article audits how Tim’s Wall Street mates – including the unlovely Lloyd Blankfein – get almost three times the attention the Treasury Secretary paya to legislators in general and Congress in particular.

Despite the wholly unconvincing denials, Geithner is anti-Warren for two reasons: she never fails to point out to the Oval Office what a shambles Geithner’s Treasury Department is; and she is very obviously batting for the other side when it comes to banking reform.

The Presidential dithering about her appointment not only dismays his supporters, it suggests to the growing body of cynics that he really is just a suit who gives good rhetoric, but is otherwise unfitted for the White House.

I think there is a dimension to Barack Obama that worries about the black man doing radical stuff. It was OK for FDR to behave like a socialist: he was a thoroughbred Ivy League Aristocrat. But the first negro President is forever under the spotlight. He’s right about this – but if so, why on earth did he blunder into healthcare during an era calling for unparalleled Government austerity?

A lot of Americans would be happier if the President took a leaf out of the sheriff’s book in Blazing Saddles. There’s a wonderfully incorrect scene in the movie where the black sheriff – under pressure – points a gun at himself and says, “One move and the nigger gets it”. There’s a real truth in this: Mel Brooks expresses horror that “The Sheriff’s a schwarze”, but the minute it looks like the town bigwigs are ganging up on him, the sheriff gains instant sympathy.

The idea of fat bankers ganging up on Obama would’ve played well – especially given the size of Blankfein’s mouth on the subject – but the President missed the bus on this one. Now he just looks like a bloke who goes with the flow. And this isn’t what blue-collar America was looking for when they elected him.