In the December issue of Boston magazine, Maureen Tkacik profiled Barney Frank for her story, “A Crash Course in Crisis Economics.” The constraints of a 3,500-word piece against the backdrop of an economic meltdown left some of her material on the cutting-room floor. But that’s why we have the Internet. Take it away, Moe.

Barney Frank is a politician of many years, many thoughts, many achievements and many, many words. I would have liked to have done justice to this man in the space allotted; alas, the art department didn’t appreciate my proposal to shrink the text down to 8 point font in a subtle tribute to the “fine print” on the subprime mortgages that begot the credit crisis.

So here are some of our favorite quotes, footnotes and outtakes:

1. Frank started his political career trying to find things to do, rather than complete his Harvard doctoral dissertation. So he went to work on the first of legendary Boston mayor Kevin White’s four mayoral elections. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in White’s first few months in office, Frank was one of the biggest forces behind the city’s successful bid to save a James Brown concert that had been canceled in the city—a move widely credited with saving Boston from the sort of riots that devastated so many other cities.

It was up to the late then-solicitor Thomas Adkins to explain to Frank who James Brown was. (Frank had thought he was a football player.)

2. He tried to go back to school but never finished the PhD. Before he returned to White’s office he did, however, lose 100 pounds on a crash diet and write a story about it called “The Incredible Shrinking Barney Frank.”

Yo-yo dieting would continue to be a leitmotif in the political life of the congressman, who responded to outrage that a federal bailout would leave predatory lenders unpunished by saying, “Yes, it’s too bad that we didn’t do anything about subprime lending. I wish the bill that the Congress passed on Fannie and Freddie in 2007 in this Committee, 2008, had been passed earlier. And I wish I could eat more and not gain weight.”

3. Father Robert Drinan, the Jesuit priest Frank replaced in Congress in 1981, was asked to step down from government as part of a blanket request by Pope John Paul II that members of the clergy not hold elected office. But most observers suspect the blanket request was inspired by Drinan, whose politics on many issues were pretty far to the left of Frank’s. Before his death in 2007, Drinan used to joke that Barney Frank was the only member of Congress actually appointed by the Pope.

A fun piece of trivia for left-leaning Catholics who appreciated the “Pontius Pilate was a governor, Jesus was a community organizer” response to Sarah Palin’s knock on Barack Obama’s experience during her speech at the Republican Convention. (Drinan went on to teach at Georgetown and become something of a pariah in the Church for his support of the right to an abortion, which he called “a terrible thing…except for women.” When he died in 2007 Frank gave a eulogy at his memorial service.

4. Bill Dannemeyer, the rabidly anti-gay former congressman who sponsored the bill to expel Frank from Congress over his prostitution scandal—and refused to use the House gymnasium over the prostitute’s highly credulity-straining Penthouse account of his relationship with Frank—still believes homosexuality is a choice whose unnaturalness is underscored by the fact that “so many homosexuals have damage to their rectums.”

But he no longer believes AIDS is spread through spores, and seems to have diverted the majority of his outrage from the gay community to a handful of secretive nebulous quasi-governmental and influential societies, chief among them the New York Federal Reserve Bank. He maintains that every powerful person in Washington—Barney Frank, he presumes, included—has “sold his soul.” At 79, he is in good health he credits to a vegan diet and a rejection of “corporate” Western medicine. He wrote in Ron Paul’s name for president. (Incidentally, Paul—along with Tom DeLay—is one of Frank’s biggest Republican fans.)

And some of our favorite Barney Frank, according to Barney Frank:

5. On the most controversial of the “absolute lies” rehashed by Stephen Gobie in a $50,000 interview he gave Penthouse (for an article about which Frank said: “It’s a word I hate to use in this context, but (the article) appears to be anti-climactic.”):

“I have never had sex with anyone in the gym nor have I heard of other people doing it. That is the craziest notion”

6. In early 1994, on the prospect of a Republican-controlled Congress with Newt Gingrich as Speaker:

“A disaster for the country, but fun for my party. Ball-busting is a breeze compared to governing.”

7. In 1995, on his support of a bailout of the Mexican peso in spite of his vote against NAFTA:

“[Financial markets] are more prone to faints, swoons and vapours than women in 19th-century English novels.”

8. On a colleague’s assertion in 2004 that he is the “single greatest authority” on housing policy:

“Someday I’d like to be the greatest married authority.”

9. On a congressman’s statement in Congress that while Barney Frank’s relationship with his boyfriend did not threaten his own marriage, it threatened the institution of marriage:

“That argument ought to be made by someone in an institution.”

10. On the Administration’s decision not to intervene to save Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy:

“People who were saying, ‘Let’s let somebody go bankrupt, let’s let them go belly up’…Looking at a dead belly is apparently not as much fun as talking about looking at a dead belly.”

11. On Republican Congressman Scott Garrett’s testimony that he had sponsored numerous amendments that would have helped prevent the Fannie/Freddie meltdown if they hadn’t been defeated by Democrats:

“Yes, the gentleman from New Jersey offered amendment after amendment—in his head. This is a serial violator writing on the mirror, ‘Stop me before I don’t legislate again.’ …I know it is a bad feeling not to get your own party with you. Sometimes, [your amendments] were defeated by only 60 percent of Republicans.”

12. Upon being surrounded by news cameras and microphones outside Nancy Pelosi’s office the week the bailout package was being ironed out:

“I have nothing to say except I know how Britney Spears feels.”

—MAUREEN TKACIK

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Economy, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted by Paul Flannery on 11/26/08 in Economy, Politics 5 Comments »