Watching Barney Be Frank

Back in the late '80s, I was working as a spokesman for a large banking trade group in Washington and got a daily ringside seat watching congress attempt to unwind the mess the savings and loan industry had become. (As a sidebar note, this was at a time when the commercial banking industry was going hoarse trying to explain to policy makers and the public that commercial banks were not S&Ls and would never be caught dead in that kind of fiasco. Their main talking point: "We're much more strictly regulated, so that couldn't happen to us." I had to repeat that one about 50 times a day to reporters. I know...you don't have to say it...I'm going to rot in hell for it.)

During the countless hearings in the house and senate, I got a chance to watch relative up-and-comers like Barney Frank (at that point, he was into his third term) deal with seasoned veterans like Henry B. Gonzales, chairman of the banking committee, whose first term as San Antonio's representative began shortly after Texas was admitted to the union.

Frank was always an edgy kind of guy. Gay and nothing to hide in that regard, he was sick and tired of politics as usual in DC. To the party leadership, he was a potential loose cannon. To those who understood and appreciated his disdain for "go-along-to-get-along" politics, he was a breath of fresh air.

I harken to the days of the S&L hearings because I spotted something very familiar when I watched Frank the other day handling a particularly vicious attack by a constituent at his town hall lynching.

You don't see as many of the brahmin class in congress these days. Nancy Pelosi is a meer shadow of Tip O'Neill. This has nothing to do with her sex; it's a difference in the effective use of power. If here today, O'Neill would have had health care reform nailed down to the point of being easily explainable to someone sharing an elevator ride.

Henry Gonzales was a tough-minded, hard-bitten pugilist, who didn't take well to challenges--especially from freshly minted, erudite gayboys from New England. It wasn't that Frank and Gonzales were diametrically opposed in their approach to banking reform--it was more that Henry was driving and others on the committee needed to sit back and stop messing with the car's radio.

During those often-contentious hearings, Frank, who clearly does not suffer fools well, could really have laid into the chairman. However, he managed to make his points effectively, with humor and candor that so often went over Gonzo's head, the poor guy never seemed to know whether to plotz or wind his watch. Surrounded as I was at the time by pinstriped. money-soaked lobbyists who loved regaling me with stories of "fact-finding" junkets they'd funded to Hawaii and/or hookers made available for well-placed members of congress, watching Barney Frank was like seeing the curtain pulled back on the Wizard of Oz while he's shouting into the microphone and working the levers controlling the pyrotechnics.

For the first time, I got to watch someone in that august body who really seemed to get it. Someone who knew how the game was played, and was finding a way to play it better than anyone else in the room. I felt like, had I the balls to be where he was, I would want to be saying the same things and working on behalf of the same people. It was among the most uplifting experiences (of which I can count on one hand) that I had working in Washington.

Which brings me to the incident of the poor lady who had been so jacked up on venomous diatribe by insurance industry lackies like Rush "And then I need you to go to these other five pharmacies, Consuela" Limbaugh that she can accuse her Jewish congressman of promoting eugenics a la Adolph Hitler. The reason I have no future in politics is because my reponse would have been along the lines of, "You worthless piece of garbage" and going downhill from there. Frank's reponse: "On what planet do you spend most of your time," after which comparing a discussion with her as useful as talking to a dining room table.

The reponse from The Right was almost Olbermannesque--"How dare you, sir..."

I don't care where one stands on health care proposals; when someone compares the attempt to provide working families with affordable comprehensive medical care to the holocaust, everyone should respond in a most unforgiving way to the person who utters that kind of vile trash. I'm all for the first amendment right to stupid speech. It doesn't mean I have to agree with it.

I'm proud of Barney Frank. I feel sorry for those who don't get that he's trying to help everyone, including the morons.