Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) announced he would not seek reelection in 2012, citing redistricting as one of many reasons he would not try to keep his seat in the House. As Paul Kane reported :
Love him or hate him — and there are few who fall anywhere in between — Rep. Barney Frank has spent the past three decades crafting one of Congress’s most pugnacious political personalities, which he has deployed frequently as a weapon in the ideological wars of the age.
On the left, the Massachusetts Democrat has been a hero for his effort to rein in the nation’s largest banks and for his role in promoting gay rights, having been the most prominent openly gay member of Congress. On the right, Frank became a stand-in, alongside Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the late senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), for attack lines designed to gin up conservative activists.
Behind the scenes, however, Frank — who was first elected in 1980 — became one of the most important lawmakers of his generation, a successful backroom negotiator who knew how to broker critical deals. With his announcement Monday that he will not seek reelection next year, he will leave a legacy that goes beyond simple politics.
Few lawmakers can claim, as Frank can, to have won the trust of both the George W. Bush Treasury Department and the gay rights movement.
“This country has never had a Congressman like Barney Frank, and the House of Representatives will not be the same without him,” President Obama said in a statement.
After the announcement, there was an outpuring of tributes for a politician who brought a unique style to Congress, much to the chagrin of opponents and delight of his fans. As Robert Kaiser wrote :
The House of Representatives is losing its least-typical member: Barney Frank announced Monday that he will retire at the end of next year. This is sad news for Congress, an institution that has faded to gray over the last generation. Sad, but predictable.
Frank (D-Mass.) was a throwback to a time when members stood out for their unique personal characteristics. He never pandered, and sometimes insulted. “I’d rather be rude than bored,” he said on many occasions, and he provided plenty of evidence that this was true. But he was also an accomplished legislator, a congressman who made a difference. He was usually the smartest man in the room, and the funniest.
In Washington, typically, reporters get to know politicians by covering them once they’ve arrived here, but this reporter met Barney Frank when he was 21 years old, and I was 18, half a century ago. We were both delegates to a long-forgotten event called the National Student Congress. Frank was the delegate from Harvard who knew Robert’s Rules of Order backward and forward, and who seemed conversant with all the big national issues of the day. The hard thing, then as now, was deciphering the words that poured out of his mouth like bullets from a Gatling gun, disguised in a thick New York-ish accent that revealed his Bayonne, N.J., origins. We have maintained friendly relations ever since, so readers should be on notice that this article may want for objectivity.
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