Barney and His Very Important Friend

Barney Frank visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday before President Obama addressed Wall Street, and he was asked by Bloomberg TV to preview the speech.

Instead of complying with this simple request, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee went into a harangue. "I apologize, but you're going to listen to him in two hours," Frank replied. "I feel no compunction to guess what I'm going to hear in a couple of hours. I don't know what he's going to say, to be honest. . . . I don't try to guess what a president is going to say, because I wouldn't be allowed to bet on it if I did."

To understand this fall's fight in Congress over Obama's financial regulation reforms, think of it as a film-noir, Washington version of "Barney and Friends." In this episode, Barney -- still round and soft, like the purple dinosaur from the children's show -- assumes a very different persona: prickly, tart-tongued, vain and ferociously partisan. At the end, they probably won't sing the "I love you, you love me" song.

Cuddly or not, Barney -- pretty much nobody calls him Chairman Frank -- is probably Obama's only hope of getting some sort of legislation through Congress.

Obama acknowledged his dependence on the Massachusetts liberal on Monday. "We have a host of members of Congress, but there's one that I have to single out because he is going to be helping to shape the agenda," he said, "and that's my good friend Barney Frank."

Just how reliant Obama is on Frank became apparent when the president told the bankers that "Barney is already working with his counterpart, Sheldon Bachus."

Um, Mr. President, the ranking Republican on the committee is Spencer Bachus, of Alabama. But, to Hill Democrats, the slip was emblematic of the administration's handling of the financial regulatory bill -- which looks eerily like the administration's mishandling of the health-care legislation.

The White House dribbled out its proposals for re-regulating Wall Street in the spring but then left it to Congress to work out the details and navigate the politics. As with health care, that stalled progress and gave opponents a chance to fill the vacuum. Now it's anybody's guess whether the regulatory scheme (which, along with health care and climate change, were Obama's top legislative priorities) will pass at all.

It has fallen to Frank to salvage what he can of the financial overhaul, particularly because Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has let Frank take the lead. And that could make for some interesting moments this fall, as Barney coins witticisms for the cause and tongue-lashes anybody who stands in his way.

At the NYSE, Frank cheerfully told CNBC, in an interview above the trading floor, that he wants cuts in military spending and higher taxes. "I think we do have to raise the taxes on most of the people who would throw things at me from down there if they heard this," he said of the stock traders.

He then went downstairs and, after scolding the Bloomberg reporter for daring to ask about Obama's speech, chided him when he asked if the reform bill was in trouble. "No," Frank shot back, although "frankly it's a better media story and probably people have decided on that." The chairman, who once forecast passage in October, went on to argue that the bill was delayed only because the adjournment date for Congress had been delayed. "December is the new October," he reasoned.

The performance was reminiscent of hundreds of such Barney moments, one of the more famous coming last month, at a health-care forum, where he went after a questioner who had likened the Democrats' proposals to Nazism. He told her that "trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining-room table."

Frank has directed similar sentiments at the political opposition. On MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" last week, he accused the right of "cynicism and stupidity," and he said of Obama's promise of "post-partisan" leadership: "I got post-partisan depression because I knew that that meant dealing with these people."

Frank owns one of the last free-range tongues in all of Washington. When CNBC asked Frank last week about a Men's Health article in which Obama suggested a tax on soft drinks, Frank replied, "The other question is, will Men's Health have a picture of the president with his shirt off?" Frank is a pariah on the right, of course, but for Obama, who found that a soft touch got him nowhere on health care, having such a prickly partisan for its point man may not be such a bad thing. Hill Democrats complain that administration officials such as Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr have so far been ineffective at building support for their far-reaching proposals.

In words, at least, Obama is indicating a tougher tack on the regulatory legislation, which should fit nicely with Frank's style. Scolding Wall Street for "quick kills and bloated bonuses," he told the bankers: "Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall."

As Barney would say: Super-de-duper, Mr. President.