Congress is losing one of its smartest members, said Jay Newton-Small in Time.com. Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts announced this week that after 32 years, he will retire from Congress in 2012. Frank’s razor-sharp wit and intimidating intelligence could have “put Machiavelli to shame,” and he put both to good use during his decade on the House Financial Services Committee and in his many TV appearances. It was Frank, for example, who once observed that Republicans who want to criminalize abortion and eviscerate poverty programs believe that “life begins at conception, and ends at birth.” Though Frank is often bitingly funny, said Jonathan Bernstein in Washington​Post.com, he’s a politician of true substance, and capped a long career of writing major legislation with the Dodd-Frank financial regulation package in 2010. Frank also deserves a place in the history books for becoming, in 1987, the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out of the closet. “He’ll be missed.”
Not by us, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Frank will forever be known as the “nation’s leading protector of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” the government-backed housing giants that poured billions into mortgages for people who couldn’t afford them, triggering the housing crash of 2008. While resisting any reform of those agencies, the strident liberal famously announced that he would “roll the dice” when it came to subsidized mortgages for the poor. Well, “the dice came up snake eyes for the housing market and the U.S. economy.” His legislation only added to the nation’s pain, said NationalReview.com. Frank helped craft the TARP bailout and the president’s health-care bill, and his “punitive” financial-reform bill won’t prevent future economic crises. Frank—who also once got caught in a gay prostitution scandal—was “an embarrassment, a reckless gambler, and a legislative malefactor.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Zack Polanski: the 'eco-populist' running for Green Party leaderIn The Spotlight 'Insurgent' party deputy is making a bid to take the Greens further to the left
-
Do smartphone bans in schools work?The Explainer Trials in UK, New Zealand, France and the US found prohibition may be only part of the solution
-
Doom: The Dark Ages – an 'exhilarating' prequelThe Week Recommends Legendary shooter adds new combat options from timed parries to melee attacks and a 'particularly satisfying' shield charge
