WASHINGTON — When Barney Frank announced the other day that he
was shuffling off stage after three decades in the Congressional
limelight, I was brought back to 1980 when some very thoughtful
friends from Harvard told me to watch him. Paul H. Weaver had been
an aide to Irving Kristol, the Godfather of Neoconservatism, which
was lustrous in those days and rightly so. Paul was one of the
brightest young neocons of his generation. I always took him
seriously. He thought that Congressman Frank was principled,
stupendously intelligent, and of good cheer — a wit. It seemed
Frank was going to be another Daniel Patrick Moynihan or at least
an Allard Lowenstein, the former Congressman and principled Liberal
activist who had recently been murdered.
Boy, were Paul and the others up there at Harvard wrong. I
followed Frank’s trajectory for years, and it always proceeded
downward. If he was principled it was the principle of sticking
with your team, however far to the left it might go. If he was
intelligent it was the intelligence of the banal. There was never
anything fresh or surprising about him. He followed the Liberal
herd and if he was clever it was in implementing the herd’s
desiderata. As for wit, all I noticed was a clownish demeanor,
somewhat reminiscent of W. C. Fields, though without the booze. A
specimen of it was presented on National Public Radio for us to
savor the other day. In responding to a contrary constituent in
2009, Frank said, “Trying to have a conversation with you would be
like trying to argue with a dining room table.” Oscar Wilde he was
not.
In an interview with the New York Times after
announcing his forthcoming retirement, he spoke of how a
“competition of people of goodwill with different points of view on
public policy” had vanished from Congress. He never blamed Liberals
for this only Newt Gingrich, the Republicans who had to “demonize
the Democrats” to take over Congress, and “the conservative news
media.” And, oh yes, he also blamed “moderates” who were too
moderate to object to the Republicans’ evil designs.
Actually, we conservatives have not changed our views much
since Barney Frank entered Congress. There are, however, two things
that have changed. The first is that we conservatives have a voice
in the public debate and it is a growing voice. Added to the
conservative writers and magazines we now have talk radio
(democratic talk radio) and Fox News. The second is that
Frank and his party have become markedly more Liberal. In their
immoderation they display an element of extreme politics that is
always present in extremist movements and is now sinking
Liberalism. The Liberals always take Liberalism too far.
Barney Frank was the first self-proclaimed homosexual in
Congress and as a spokesman for gay rights he was ardent. Today
homosexuals have their rights, but they want to claim the right to
marry, not to sign civil union papers before the state like those
heterosexuals who want a civil union. They want to claim marriage
in a church. Will churches be allowed to deny them this right, free
from the reach of civil rights law? It is too early to know, but as
I watch the treatment of church-run hospitals refusing abortion and
church-run adoption agencies treating homosexual couples
differently than heterosexual couples, I worry about Liberals again
going too far.
Certainly Liberals went too far in extending subprime
mortgages to those who could not afford them. Through all their
travails Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had a great protector in Frank.
Frank was a typical Liberal advocate of subprime loans for the
penurious. As late as July 2008 he told CNBC that “I think this is
a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they
are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments
these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they
are in good shape going forward.” Ooops, and in 2009 he took over
the Financial Services Committee to work his wizardry on the whole
financial industry. The result was Dodd-Frank, which took the
crony-capitalism of Fannie and Freddie to a whole new
level.
Barney Frank has cost the taxpaying American people a
bundle, and now that the bills are coming due he is retiring. My
guess is he will be richly rewarded on the lecture circuit where he
will lecture Liberals on how swell they had it, while others clean
up his mess. No, he never made it as a Moynihan or a
Lowenstein.
