In an age when so many politicians are invisible under the expensive facades created by their handlers, it’s painful to think how much we will miss Barney Frank, now 71, who just announced that he will not run for reelection to his U.S. House seat next year.
Frank—the first gay U.S. Congressman to come out voluntarily, the politician who famously said, “I’m used to being in the minority. I’m a left-handed gay Jew.” Frank—who, when a woman at a town meeting asked him why he supported a “Nazi policy” like universal health care, said, “Ma’am, trying to having a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.”
Barney Frank is a person, not a product. You might not always agree with him; the Advocate hasn’t agreed, for example, with his permissive position on gambling. You might catch him in an error; once we called him to demand why he had spoken favorably of a bill giving the U.S. the right to monitor everyone entering Iran by land, sea or air, and he admitted that he hadn’t read the fine print and that the bill went too far.
But Barney Frank never quit caring about his constituents in Massachusetts and throughout the country. In 2007, with the economy on the brink of a disastrous recession, he became chair of the House Financial Services Committee; in that role he pushed for the reform of financial services and was known for being, as he once said, a “conspicuous nonworshipper at the altar of the Federal Reserve and Alan Greenspan.” He warned that the repeal of crucial provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated separation of banking and investment institutions, was dangerous, and that for federal mortgage assistance firms to get into the subprime lending business would lead to waves of foreclosure.
Born in New Jersey, Frank stayed in Massachusetts after graduating from Harvard Law School and served as a state representative before being elected to Congress from the commonwealth’s 4th District in 1980. Through the years he voted for civil rights (equal rights amendments, gay rights), for reproductive rights, for the rights of medical marijuana users. He voted for the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on homosexuality. He voted for clean water and the preservation of rare species. He voted for lower interest on student loans, and against the withdrawal of federal funding for public radio.
Through the Bush years, Frank pulled against the administration, voting against war funding bills that set no time frame for troop withdrawals from Iraq and against the extension of the Patriot Act. He voted for health coverage and financial compensation for the 9/11 first responders and against extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. He voted to repeal tax breaks for oil companies, to charge them royalties for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and to offer tax breaks for alternative energy use.
Frank, who said he “bonded” with Texas Republican Ron Paul around their shared distrust of the opaque Federal Reserve, remembers the time before the disease of extremism had blighted party politics, and polarization had paralyzed the process in the Capitol. What will be missed is not only his vote, but his voice—always smart, sometimes angry, often funny, always believing that the standard of fairness exists, and that the business of government is to apply it for the good of the people.
