"Let me put it this way," said Warren on yesterday's call. "I'm saving all the rocks in my pockets for Republicans. And if that's too partisan for you, then shame on me." Other officials drone. But Warren, an Oklahoma native and once-and-future Harvard Law School professor, never mastered the Washington monotone. She speaks with passion. It's not too much to say that it's that sort of thing that didn't help her case all that much. You'll hear talk in Washington that Warren was too anti-bank, too anti-Wall Street. And there's something too that, by her own admission. "We're not here to serve banks. We're not here to serve Wall Street. We're not here," she emphasizes that last bit, "to serve Congress. We're here to serve American families." But there's a real way in which Warren just seemed, well, too invested in her cause -- creating a powerful Washington presence that would bring transparency, structure, and some measure of sanity to the consumer credit market.

"I have become con-tro-ver-see-uhl," she says, "which I think is code for getting something done."

And so, Obama has named Richard Cordray to take over things from here. Cordray, a Democrat, is a former Attorney General of Ohio with a record of fighting banks, and he's been working with Warren in standing up the bureau.

But, wait. That anti-CFPB Shelby letter from May, signed by all by three Senate Republicans, objected to the very idea of a consumer agency that looks like what Warren and her team have created. The Senate GOP called for replacing Warren -- excuse me, the CFPB director -- with a board of directors, subjecting the agency's funding to the congressional appropriations process (so as to better let financial industry lobbyists have their way, says Warren), and having other federal financial regulators play nanny to whatever the up-with-people CFPB should come up with. "Such a check by the prudential regulators," explains the Senate Republicans' letter to Obama, "will provide a reasonable restraint on the CFPB's authority." Concludes the missive, "we will not support the consideration of any nominee, regardless of party affiliation, to be the CFPB director until the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is reformed."

And so, in light of all that, is there any real chance that Cordray will ever actually head this agency? Is he meant to just be the nominated piñata while Warren goes on to do something else -- say, run for Senate in Massachusetts, as some are speculating? Warren tries explaining Obama's strategy, but she seems to be selling herself on it as she talks. "You know...I don't know," she says. "People seem to think that a lot of this is on me. And more than anything else, I don't want to hurt this agency. If I'm drawing fire, then that's it." She goes on. "The president can say, 'Okay, you objected like crazy to this woman,'" but now, he "can say quite reasonably, 'I put somebody else on the table. He's got a resume that's worth taking a look at.'" Her leaving, she says, creates an opportunity to battle out the CFPB's existence in a way that's not so, well, about her.