Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced today that he will retire from Congress at the end of his term. Frank cited a series of scandals as his reasons for leaving–from the prostitution ring that ran from his apartment in the late 1980s; to his role in placing his then-boyfriend in a job at government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae in the 1990s, while Frank was on the House Financial Services Committee; to new questions raised today about Frank’s potential involvement in the unfolding insider trading scandal in Congress.
Frank finally apologized for his role in the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis of 2007-8 and set the stage for the worst recession since the Great Depression. Frank had shielded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from regulation, which in turn encouraged banks and buyers to embrace unstable mortgages. These were repackaged and sold as securities whose instability was masked due to their implicit government guarantees.
That’s not actually what happened today, though it is what should have happened long ago. Instead, Frank is retiring because he barely survived a tough challenge by Sean Bielat in the 2010 elections, because redistricting will make it harder for him to hold onto his seat, and because he cannot foresee Democrats re-taking the House. The road ahead is rough, and Frank believes he has better–perhaps more lucrative–things to do.
I am not celebrating Frank’s departure–partly because it is long overdue, partly because it would have been more satisfying to see him defeated, and partly because he is somewhat responsible for launching my political career in an exchange that went viral on YouTube:
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As I recalled in Jonah Goldberg’s anthology, Proud to Be Right (HarperCollins 2010):
I wanted to challenge the hypocrisy of Rep. Frank’s attack on corporate bonuses, when congressional staffers had just earned a bonus for 2008. As I listened to his speech and heard his response to the first few questions from the floor, I was struck at how breezily he blamed everyone else for the crisis. Not content with blaming George W. Bush, Rep. Frank tried to implicate every conservative from Ronald Reagan in the 1980s all the way back to Robert Taft in the 1930s. A new question formed in my mind as I stepped to the microphone.“How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?” I asked.
Rep. Frank lost his temper, labeling me as part of a “Right-wing attack” and avoiding an answer. So I do what young lawyers are taught to do when facing a hostile witness: repeat the question.
That outraged him even more, but I kept my cool. My wife did not. “Stop labeling him!” she yelled at Rep. Frank. “I like labels,” he snapped back.
Our exchange continued for a few more minutes before the dean of the school called proceedings to an abrupt and early end. I went back to the library, expecting that my standoff with Rep. Frank might merit a mention in the next morning’s Harvard Crimson, if that. Little did I know that the local Fox News affiliate had taped the debate and posted it online. Soon it was on YouTube, being watched by thousands. It was featured by both Fox and MSNBC, the Right- and Left-wing networks finding rare agreement in their judgment that Rep. Frank had behaved boorishly. I was on several television and radio shows, and received e- mails and letters from around the country. Soon afterward, several Republicans back home in Illinois encouraged me to run for Congress in my home district.
I had stumbled into Frank’s signature debating style–a form of intellectual bullying that combines partisan abuse with a barrage of meaningless detail and legislative minutiae. It is resented even by those who agree with him on the substance of the issues, and after my confrontation with Frank, I received congratulations from several left-wing Harvard professors who were happy that someone had stood up to him on a public platform.
Barney Frank is also a quick wit–all too rare on the left–and will be remembered well for being the first openly gay member of Congress, among other achievements. Yet his most damaging legacies–the housing crisis, the financial “reform” that bears his name, and the hyper-partisanship to which he eagerly contributed–outweigh Frank’s positive contributions. How unfortunate that his constituents did not eject him much sooner.
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