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The New York Times
U.S.
A Liberal Wit Builds
Bridges to the G.O.P.
By DAVID M.
HERSZENHORN, nytimes.com on the Web. May 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — Representative
Barney Frank, the rumpled, cantankerous chairman of the Financial Services
Committee, plopped down on a leather bench off the House floor last week.
After two months of trying to win Republican support for his bill to help
homeowners at risk of foreclosure, he had come up short.
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Stephen Crowley/NY Times
Barney Frank |
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The White House had just threatened a
veto.
But Mr. Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat and the most prominent gay member of
Congress, who always seems on the verge of an outburst, was more philosophical
than combustible as he explained the administration’s opposition.
Between an economic stimulus package and the Federal Reserve’s rescue of Wall
Street, he said, “they have been pushed into accepting a lot of government help
for the market.”
“People aren’t good at doing things they dislike,” he added.
Then, in a flash of trademark wit, he said that asking the White House to
support more government intervention was “like asking me to judge the Miss
America contest — if your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”
With relations between the White House and the Democratic Congress growing more
acidic as the presidential election approaches, Mr. Frank, 68 and in his 14th
term, has emerged as a key deal-maker, an unlikely bridge between his party’s
left-wing base and the free-market conservatives in the administration,
particularly Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.
In the process, Mr. Frank has won praise, even from some Republican colleagues
in the House who generally disagree with his politics but say he has treated
them with a fair hand and an eye toward compromise.
Mr. Frank has ascended to his powerful committee chairmanship at a critical
time, with the economy in turmoil and housing, the issue he is most passionate
about, on center stage.
It is a role he clearly relishes but also one that is testing his impatience,
which even allies say can lead to impulsiveness, and his ability to control his
sharp tongue, which can be amusing but also downright mean.
And it is with great glee, usually to emphasize a centrist position on an issue,
that he quotes Republican warnings in a 2006 campaign advertisement that he
would pursue a “radical homosexual agenda” were Democrats to win control of
Congress.
Longtime friends and colleagues say Mr. Frank is more self-assured than he was
in 1989 when he admitted hiring a male prostitute as a personal aide; the man
had run an escort service from Mr. Frank’s apartment without his knowledge.
And yet, they say, while his hair is thinner and his paunch a bit flabbier, he
has not mellowed much from a decade ago, when he emerged as one of President
Clinton’s fiercest defenders during impeachment proceedings.
Mr. Frank is as close a contemporary as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has in Congress,
born just five days after her. He has been a point man for the Democratic
leadership not just on housing, but on the economic stimulus package approved in
February and on a bill outlawing workplace discrimination against gay men and
lesbians approved last fall.
Many say they also respect his zest for cutting a deal and, indeed, Mr. Frank
still hopes to reach one on the housing legislation. To appeal to the
White House, he has made numerous revisions, including dropping a plan to have
the government serve as a clearinghouse for auctioning bundles of refinanced
mortgages.
Within the administration, where some high-level officials privately refer to
him as “scary smart,” no one is underestimating him. After the House
approved his bill on Thursday, though without enough votes to override a veto,
Mr. Frank quickly went on the offensive, seeking to undercut the
administration’s argument that homeowners in trouble should have known better.
“No dumb people got America into this problem,” he snapped. “You had to be
really smart to understand collateralized debt obligation derivatives.”
Mr. Frank, who holds degrees from Harvard and Harvard Law School, understands
collateralized debt obligations.
What vexes the administration, at times, is that he also holds strong liberal
feelings about what he views as the government’s top obligations — to aid the
poor and protect victims of discrimination, to police the markets and, in the
case of as many as two million Americans at risk of losing their homes, to offer
a helping hand if one is needed.
Some Republicans say it is a mistake to typecast Mr. Frank.
“I think that Barney is misunderstood in some quarters as just being a
hard-bound ideological liberal,” said Michael G. Oxley, the former congressman
from Ohio who preceded Mr. Frank as chairman of the Financial Services
Committee, “when in fact his legislative career has been really full of
accomplishment and understanding of how markets work and how systems work.”
Mr. Oxley, a Republican, said that in the current Congress, Mr. Frank had
“really stepped up and filled a void.”
“Just the fact that he was willing to step in and forge a relationship with Hank
Paulson, to try to get things done, I think that’s always been Barney’s
strength,” he said.
Mr. Paulson has said that when he arrived in Washington, he was surprised to
discover Mr. Frank’s keen understanding of Wall Street, given his lack of work
experience in the private sector. In an interview, Mr. Paulson said he had
enjoyed Mr. Frank’s penchant for brokering deals.
“Because he is looking to get things done and make a difference, he focuses on
areas of agreement and tries to build on those,” Mr. Paulson said. “He
doesn’t waste anybody’s time, your time or his.”
And, he added, “It’s always more fun to work with someone who has got a sense of
humor.”
A veteran of parliamentary battles, Mr. Frank is a master of procedural
weaponry. When a tactic by Republicans backfired and stripped out
provisions that they had wanted, Mr. Frank initially refused to let them fix it.
“If you want to look at this as one big circus, today is the day that the
gentleman from Alabama gets to clean up after the elephants,” he said, referring
to Representative Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on his committee.
“And I mean elephants.”
During debate on the bill, a measure to provide debt relief to impoverished
countries, he won praise from Republicans.
“Barney has been very fair,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California
and one of the most conservative members of the House. “I think that I
have been treated more fairly, and a number of my Republican colleagues have
been treated more fairly, since the Democrats have become the majority than I
was treated by my own leadership.”
Mr. Frank politely interjected, “I know the gentleman joins me in looking
forward to continued years of such treatment.”
Such friendly banter was a far cry from the day in 1995 when Representative Dick
Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, referred to him as “Barney Fag”
in a radio interview.
Mr. Frank, who was born and raised in New Jersey, where his father owned a truck
stop, often speaks eloquently about the discrimination experienced by gay men
and lesbians.
“I used to be someone subject to this prejudice, and, through luck,
circumstance, I got to be a big shot,” he said during debate on the employment
nondiscrimination bill in November. “I am now above that prejudice.
But I feel an obligation to 15-year-olds dreading to go to school because of the
torments, to people afraid that they will lose their job in a gas station if
someone finds out who they love.”
Other times, though, Mr. Frank’s impatience and sharp tongue take over.
When Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia,
criticized a component of the housing bill that would give money to local
governments to buy and repair foreclosed properties, saying it would not protect
homeowners from foreclosure, Mr. Frank fired back that preventing foreclosures
was the goal of a different bill.
“The notion that this bill doesn’t keep people out of foreclosure is true,” he
said. “It doesn’t combat global warming. It doesn’t get troops out
of Iraq. It won’t help me lose weight. There are a lot of things
this bill won’t do that I very much want to do. None of them are a reason
to vote against a bill that doesn’t do what it doesn’t say it’s going to do but
does what it does. What it does is go to the aid of cities that have been
victimized.”
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