A Conversation with Barney Frank
On campus for a Yale Political Union debate on partisan loyalty, former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank sat down for an intimate talk with a group of scholars at ISPS, moderated by Director Jacob S. Hacker. He spoke about his 30 years in Congress in terms of the geographical boundaries of his district that kept changing, later linking that idea to the personal boundaries he had crossed as the first politician to voluntarily come out as gay, back in the middle years of the Reagan administration.
Reflecting on his childhood in Bayonne, NJ, Frank said that he felt an early calling to public service—but didn’t think that being gay would be a barrier to elected office. “I knew I was a homosexual growing up in the 1950s, but figured no one had to know I was one.” The bigger obstacle at the time was being Jewish. “And it was already out I was Jewish. I had been bar mitzvahed.”
Turning to politics, Frank and Hacker discussed the causes and consequences of record levels of polarization in Washington. Frank argued that the Republican Party, taken over by its most right-wing factions, bears much of the responsibility for the gridlock in Washington. He also maintained that polarization didn’t really lead to dysfunction until after the Republicans took control of the House—after the Affordable Care Act, his co-authored Dodd-Frank bill on financial regulation, and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had become defining achievements of the Obama first term.
On the place of academics in shaping public policy, Frank noted, “If academics don’t play a role, then industry will fill the slack.” He gave examples of academics who successfully crossed over to being policy makers: newly-elected Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, an expert on bank regulation, as well former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. He said their experience showed that “to be effective in policy, experts [academics] need to find politicians who are like-minded.”
In his retirement, Frank is writing a book on why we need government. “The asymmetry [in America] is between people who believe in government and those who don’t.” His book aims to narrow that seemingly unbridgeable divide with an argument about how government contributes to the common good.
Despite the rampant disagreements that to some extent drove him to leave Congress, Frank ended the discussion on an optimistic note. “Reality overcomes the prejudice. People learn stereotypes aren’t true. This is true with women, race, gender, age, religion. Discrimination is not a zero sum game.”
“Today my continued sexual attraction to men is more popular than my attraction to government,” he joked.