With Barney leaving, ethically challenged Maxine Waters waits in wings

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., will be remembered in retirement as a Democratic Gingrich but with only half Newt’s charm. The brainy and insufferably arrogant former chairman and current ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee is best known for his blustery, partisan, and plain wrong insistence for years before the collapse of the housing bubble that there were no problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Another memorable moment of Frank’s career will be the interminable and extremely ungracious victory speech he gave after his unexpectedly close 2010 re-election: “The collective campaigns that were run by most Republicans were beneath the dignity of a democracy,” he declared.

He was frequently wrong and never in doubt, but, Mark Twain’s “native criminal class” aphorism notwithstanding, Frank was not a crook. He understood the vicissitudes of the nexus between big government and big business. When one of his aides on the Financial Services Committee quit in 2010 to take a job lobbying for the financial industry, he took the highly unusual step of criticizing him in public and ordering the rest of his staff to cut off all contact. It was an act for which we praised him at the time, and an example that we encouraged Republicans to follow.

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