Excerpted from various sources, including Tim Duncan, chairman of American Business Leaders for Financial Reform and president of Story Street Partners.

61-year-old Oklahoman named Elizabeth Warren is slated to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. Washington’s special-interest folks hate this because as a bankruptcy expert at Harvard Law school, she gets what they are doing. And she is standing up for consumers and politely saying out loud what ordinary Americans are thinking.

But no one disputes that she’s the most prominent and polarizing candidate to lead the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The idea for an independent federal agency to protect ordinary borrowers from abuses by lenders was largely Warren’s idea, and Congress made it a reality as part of the legislation adopted last month to overhaul financial regulations. The bureau’s director will be the most powerful new banking regulator in decades and the first with the exclusive mission of focusing on consumers.

In early August, an industry lobbyist said Warren couldn’t manage the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a fair and balanced way because she wants to protect ordinary Americans from bad financial products. In other words: Anyone who has been involved in consumer protection should be disqualified from heading an agency that was created to provide protection to consumers. Okay then . . .

Foxes in Henhouse

In recent years, most people appointed to federal financial-industry regulators have either been lobbyists or have come from inside the industry. So it’s not surprising that many Americans are fed up and furious about the revolving door between industry and federal agencies.

If industry is going to fight the appointment of regulators simply because they HAVE a background in consumer advocacy, it is high time for a full public airing of the qualifications and industry ties of appointees over the last decade and the results — preferably through the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Do industry leaders really want this cat out of the bag?

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There are other candidates, of course. However, decision makers need to recognize is that this particular job, at this particular time, is about more than competence. As the reform bill went through Congress, the banks were unrelenting in trying to kill or weaken the bureau. Having failed, they want influence in selecting its director.

Meanwhile, polls have shown public mistrust or misunderstanding of the administration’s economic policies. President Obama’s choice to head the bureau must demonstrate that he cares more about ordinary Americans than about Wall Street, that he understands that the public interest differs — sometimes sharply — from the interests of big banks. He needs someone the banks do not want, and that someone is Ms. Warren.

There is nothing in Warren’s long academic and public- service record that indicates any unwillingness to consider all sides of a question. Industry leaders such as Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, have said Warren is receptive to hearing industry’s point of view.

Special Interest Selections: Regardless of who is appointed director of the CFPB, there is no chance that the financial industry will be ignored. It spends tens of millions on lobbying annually, donates hundreds of millions to members of Congress and there are dozens of statutory and regulatory provisions preventing the adoption of whimsical or unnecessary regulation governing the industry.

Stop Digging

The financial industry may want to consider the results of its strategy of stubborn obstructionism. Industry lobbyists and executives proclaimed U.S. President Barack Obama’s financial-reform bill dead on arrival within days of him announcing it last year. The same people were quoted predicting the consumer- protection agency would never happen under their watch.

It was a serious miscalculation and reflective of the industry’s misjudgment of its power and credibility after it did so much to bring on the great recession. Whatever goodwill the industry had retained following the economic crisis went up in smoke in 2009 as it demonstrated an almost uncanny knack for saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Instead of killing the financial-reform bill, the result was an even tougher, more comprehensive one than the president had proposed.

Public Backlash

Now, for some inexplicable reason, the financial industry is publicly campaigning to prevent Warren from becoming the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a post for which she is eminently qualified.

The result of the industry’s efforts so far has been to elevate the issue to the national level and re-ignite the suspicions and resentment of millions of Americans.

The universal vilification of banks and other industry participants is unfair to those companies and executives who have put their customers’ and shareholders’ interests on par with their own in recent years and tried to do the right thing.

Better Regulation

But the words and actions of some continue to cast a shadow on the entire industry. Arbitrarily piling more regulations on top of already ineffective ones won’t help consumers and will add an unnecessary burden to a stressed financial system.

Warren, and others like her, has pushed not for more regulation but for more sensible and effective regulation to protect the financial health of middle-class Americans.

Financial-industry leaders should recognize that our country needs change in this regard and that more sensible and simplified regulation will benefit both consumers and the industry alike.