Congressman Barney Frank
A MOMENT INTERVIEW WITH CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK Several weeks ago, the Jewish members of the House of Representatives—all 30 of them—were invited to a meeting with Secretary of...
...Still, there's no question that having lived through World War II does make a difference, having experienced that horror firsthand...
...there weren't the strong enemies...
...If Bob hadn't supported me, I wouldn't have won...
...Well, you might say that you could have expected that...
...I think what you have to account for is why Jews were underrepresented before...
...And of course, evenings like that can be very useful...
...If you look at the voting records in Congress, you can tell the liberals from the conservatives...
...The term "neo-liberal" makes me nervous, even though I think it makes less difference practically than it does rhetorically...
...Anyway, adults shouldn't be treated like children, and it's unfair, therefore, to try to keep such things from audiences...
...And I also inherited an enormous base of political support...
...Here in the Massachusetts House, there are a lot of people who are Democrats, but the liberals are a very small minority...
...It's really very good...
...they didn't do it on AWACS, and the Falwellite senators just voted for the sale...
...And the thing that really frosted it for me was about a year and a half ago when we met with people at the State Department on the issue of the Falashas...
...Oh yes...
...People are very accepting of it, comfortable with it...
...So what does happen when you get together...
...I think that when people say, "Don't label me," they mean, "Let me appeal to everybody...
...Anyway, I have no problem at all with the term "liberal...
...Is there still a coherent and energetic liberalism...
...So being Jewish was a big thing to me...
...Take American behavior towards the Saudis, for example...
...While there's been a perceptible shift in Jewish political opinion in this country, on most issues Jews are still quite dramatically more liberal than other groups...
...You know how every year Lucy says to Charlie Brown, "This year I'll really hold the football for you," but then, at the last minute, she pulls it away and Charlie Brown falls down...
...That's probably a useful thing, because there's always a tendency, when you're working mostly within your own group, to overemphasize differences...
...I think one thing that affected Israel somewhat negatively is, ironically, Camp David...
...Do you find any generational differences in Congress regarding Israel...
...His style may be a little different from what some people would like, but he's been sticking to liberal principles right along...
...I certainly feel less constrained than I did as a member of the State legislature in Massachusetts...
...But coming to Congress was a really exciting experience for me, after having served in the House here in Massachusetts...
...I mean, that's a pretty hefty increase...
...In the same vein, it used to be that one could assume that liberalism and pro-Israelism went hand-inhand...
...But in the House of Representatives, in Washington, the liberals are the majority, and it was a really pleasurable shock to me to find that...
...And I got a nationwide list of political supporters, who've been much more important than the opponents I also inherited...
...We've learned, for example, that your tax system may not be able to be quite as progressive as you'd like it to be if you're competing with countries that give subsidies to their industries...
...Can there be a politically viable liberalism without a leader to articulate its meaning for the public...
...Let's switch to the secular side for a bit...
...I've found the Israeli Embassy staff very open during the two and a half years I've been down in Washington...
...It's not one that we have in any other area, and I think if you adopt it, you weaken the relationship...
...It was interesting, because among ourselves, either when it's Members only or when we're meeting with Aren?, Evron, and such, there's a lot more disagreement expressed...
...Of course, when, for one reason or another, there are other people there, you've got to be careful to re-emphasize the fundamentals...
...Where does such a notion come from...
...And the same thing holds in the reverse direction...
...Still, there is something to it, but I think it has more to do with the changed circumstances...
...I'm talking about the House—you really don't get to interact much with senators...
...What I owe to Bob Drinan mostly in straight political terms is a very good national list of supporters...
...There weren't the strong supporters...
...Just ask yourself whether any budget at the local level is going up by eight percent these days—let alone by 14 percent...
...Crime is a good example of that...
...But there, with the Secretary, there was much more of a sense that we had a common position to present...
...there has been...
...Phil Burton, who just died, was another...
...I know what his people can do when they really care about an issue...
...And then from time to time there are meetings, maybe six or so since I've been there...
...You can't stay in Lebanon to try to make them trade with you...
...As in a family, where people may feel free to disagree vehemently with each other, but will put up a united front to outsiders...
...Scheuer convened this one because he's closer to Shultz...
...I think you see that in the candidates...
...An evening like that is a good opportunity for us to get across some of our concerns...
...I grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey, in a very Jewish though not very religious family...
...Crime is probably the area where the liberals have been weakest...
...several times, and with Begin once, and then we met with the Conference of Presidents on the Soviet Jewry issue...
...First, 1 sort of inherited some issues...
...Drinan, whose district I represented after he left the House, is a good example...
...it certainly can't justify accusing its supporters of being "weak" on defense...
...We were pretty active...
...The skepticism and anti-establishment views that we associate with the Vietnam generation I don't find in Congress...
...Nobody's talking any more about exces' sive lenience towards criminals...
...There's a kind of camaraderie...
...There's a very real separation between the House and the Senate, much more than in other legislative bodies...
...And I've heard the same thing from other places in the country...
...But I'm more comfortable with the old term...
...Look^ it's just one of the problems of democracy...
...Your predecessor was...
...The fact is that in the operation of the other branches, you might even have a higher proportion of Jews, if for no other reason than simply as a reflection of the socio-economic position of the Jews...
...it's much less true in the House...
...And Jerry Falwell didn't lift a finger to help...
...I think it's too high...
...We don't have that kind of party structure and organization...
...In general, liberals are still in pretty good shape...
...Now, Jews are statistically overrepresented in Congress, with eight senators and 30 members of the House...
...Has that connection been broken...
...Yeah, we've got to stimulate the economy, but we also have people—sick people, poor people, old people—and he's done a pretty creditable job of it...
...We're told they're being helpful, but nobody says how...
...In 1972, and in 1974, and in 1976, his major opponent was Jewish...
...Mo Udall is obviously one such person...
...I think it's fair to say that we now have a more unified and coherent Democratic party, around a fairly liberal position, than we've had since the New Deal...
...And the excesses that sometimes marked liberals have gone away...
...there's no longer any district that's "bad" for Jews...
...How do you react to the term "neo-liberal...
...Menachem Begin obviously has a great deal of appeal within Israel, but he doesn't sell well overseas...
...In area after area, I find people who think about things the way I do, people from all over the country...
...He's held to the view that the government has a responsibility to help people...
...Would such a meeting have been held a decade or two ago...
...I think people pay a little more attention to me on those issues because I'm Bob's successor...
...The current numbers are not higher than the general presence of Jews in politics and government...
...I quoted that statement to Shultz, and I said, "You know, the Falashas are militarily worthless, they're going to remain objects of charity for many years to come...
...Do you have a hypothesis as to why this sudden surge in Jewish membership...
...The notion that American Jewish audiences have to somehow be sheltered from the real differences is crazy...
...We're not a formal group, but Sid is the senior member, and he also happens to have the biggest office...
...we had more than 16,000 contributors...
...Well, the football is moderation, and we keep giving them F-15s, or the AWACS, or this or that, and they never respond the way we hope they will...
...In the House, there are four or five Jewish Republicans...
...Maybe they just wanted to see Scheuer's house...
...The wraps are coming off now, because Jews are more interested in it and because people are more accepting of it...
...I'm not aware that people wouldn't have come in an earlier time...
...And we do have Tip O'Neill, who does a very good job of being a liberal leader...
...Labels aren't perfect descriptions, but they're useful indicators...
...In American politics, there usually isn't a single leader...
...We can do two services for Israel...
...America from time to time finds itself in major disagreement with France, with England, with Canada...
...Now some of them are in the Sudan, and we asked why we can't get those people into Israel more quickly, and the answer, from our own State Department, is that the Sudanese don't want to offend the Saudis...
...There's never a negative to it...
...Still, there has been an attitudinal shift, and it seems to be related to a few issues that are especially compelling, issues on which liberals were either silent or wrong...
...In fact, the only ward in the city of Newton to vote for the death penalty was Ward 8, the most Jewish ward in the city, the one that gave me my largest majority of any ward in 1980, clearly the most liberal ward in the city, and it's the only ward to vote for the death penalty...
...Sid Yates is usually the convenor, and Sid presided that night with Shultz...
...I've got some criticisms of Israeli policy, but then you listen to others, and it's a good way to remind yourself what side you're on...
...Howard Metzenbaum does a lot of pace-setting on issues...
...Human rights issues, mostly...
...That doesn't mean there's been no recognition of constraints...
...I'm a liberal...
...And in the specific case of the neo-liberals, they're contributing to the myth that we've tried the liberal solutions and they didn't work...
...Ronald Reagan has helped us get our act together, because he's brought to the fore the issues where most of us can agree...
...You hear that all the time, and it's usually based on an exaggeration of the amount of money that was actually spent on solving the major social problems, on an unfair denigration of what was accomplished...
...Sure...
...That's a fair point...
...With regard to defense, nobody's talking about a weak defense for America...
...In my last election, 70 percent of the district was new, after the reapportionment, and I could tell the difference...
...The way things turned out, I was kind of the poster child for liberalism in 1982...
...We didn't just stay home from school, we went to the synagogue, and I went to Hebrew school...
...A MOMENT INTERVIEW WITH CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK Several weeks ago, the Jewish members of the House of Representatives—all 30 of them—were invited to a meeting with Secretary of State Shultz at the home of Representative Scheuer, and 28 of the 30 showed up...
...What's your own Jewish background...
...For all that Israel did, for which it didn't get enough credit, Sadat was the first Arab who was really popular in America, and, in terms of American public relations, that helped change the overall image...
...I doubt that you could tell the neo-liberals from the liberals...
...No one should expect that it will when it comes to Israel...
...I feel that myself...
...People say things like, "You've got to stop expanding the settlements...
...People say, "Well, the liberals have run out on Israel," but on the AWACS sale, it was the right wing that ran out on Israel...
...Well, the proper answer would have been to say, "Of course Begin is making his views known, he's got a responsibility to do that, and if people are influenced by those views, so be it...
...That has to be done...
...There are Jews who represent districts that have a lot of Jews, and there are Jews that represent districts that have no Jews...
...There's some criticism of Israel on the left, but the reports of it seem to me to have been overdone...
...And he beat them by carrying Brookline and Newton, heavily Jewish districts...
...You spoke earlier, in connection with Israel, of the difference you feel when you're talking "in the family" from the way you feel when you're talking outside...
...The session was off the record, so I can't talk about it, but I can say that it's clear to me that the fear that there is a BechtelShultz-Weinberger axis is unfounded...
...Liberals have acted as if there were something wrong with punishing criminals...
...the problem, instead, would be with districts where there were some Jews, enough to make an issue, but not enough to carry the vote...
...in the Senate, there are four Jews from each party...
...The fact is that since I've been in Washington—that's just a little over two years—I've been to maybe a dozen or so meetings of Jewish congressmen...
...So that's been helpful...
...But that turns out not to be a problem either...
...You can believe that the underlying cause of crime is social without believing that the person who commits a crime is justified...
...If you don't like it, don't be it...
...Partly, I guess, I just feel that no one should be a "neo" anything...
...The surprising part is that Jews are getting elected from every kind of district...
...If you treat the relationship as so fragile that a word of criticism will destroy it, it will become exactly that fragile...
...Bob Drinan was a very strong figure...
...Absolutely...
...Why is it that nobody can contemplate that the American government, or we individually, would have differences with Israel...
...So what kind of hatred infects the Saudis that they nonetheless begrudge the Falashas a bit more decent life...
...I think that's a great mistake...
...I won't quote anything Shultz said about the Arabs, but I can tell you that at one point he did say, explaining an aspect of American policy, "Well, you know, I'm not in charge of everything...
...They're like Lucy with the football, and we're like Charlie Brown...
...I may not like what Israel is doing on the West Bank, but you've got to be careful when you say something like that in front of people who don't understand your basic commitment that you make that commitment explicit...
...One sees that a bit with Jewish audiences, too, where quite a few Jewish leaders who might privately be highly critical of this policy or that will not voice such criticism before an audience, will, instead, imply or even explicitly state their support for those same policies...
...Accepting a sociological explanation for crime in general doesn't provide an excuse for a particular criminal...
...he had a lot of fans, and a lot of detractors...
...We met with Evron several times, and with Aren...
...We raised over a million dollars in contributions of that size...
...I've on occasion written letters or made phone calls...
...The new interest is in electoral politics, in actually standing for office...
...You meet people from the State Department, and there's a good interchange...
...Whereupon Howard W?lpe said, "Why not...
...The American Jewish community doesn't automatically support every action the American government takes, and it shouldn't...
...And he doesn't have a good answer for that one...
...You'd expect them to be deeply involved in politics, given their background, and they are...
...On that issue, I often remind my constituents that the debate is about whether to increase the defense budget by eight percent or by 14 percent...
...I think Shultz is a little bit embarrassed by Weinberger...
...One is to keep working for supportive American policies that will help Israel, and the second is to point out to the Israelis what things they may be doing that will make it hard to maintain that support...
...Now the Falashas have to be the most bedraggled, misery-infected people in the world, the worst-possible off...
...I remember a "boycott Britain" bumper sticker on our car back in 1947, and a lot of our social life revolved around the Jewish community center, and the Center Day Camp was where we went in the summer...
...In other words, the numbers don't reflect a new interest by Jews in politics...
...How do you actually go about making your views known to the Israelis...
...We understand better the longterm effect of deficits, the implications of international competition and things like that...
...And there are some other people in the House who, when they speak out, get a response...
...Yes...
...What's it like taking Father Drinan's place in Congress...
...I just came from a state Democratic convention, and it's the first time I can remember where nobody got booed...
...I see speaking to predominantly Jewish audiences as an extension of the intrafamily conversation, and I think it's essential that we talk among ourselves about American policy towards Israel—including the areas where we have differences with the Israelis...
...You'll remember that the only Black in the Senate was a Republican...
...You can't try to take over the West Bank...
...1 just don't understand where the idea of being quiet comes from...
...Back during the AWACS debate, it was Richard Nixon, that great mayvin of moral responsibility, who suggested that Begin was interfering in American politics...
...And the Arabs have gotten smarter...
...We give them everything they want...
...Of course, there were other reasons we did that well, such as the circumstances of the election...
...it turns out that there are at least eight cases where Falwell-type senators replaced liberal Democrats with pro-Israel voting records, where their replacements voted with the Administration on AWACS...
...we've always been interested in politics...
...What, for example, took place at Scheuer's house...
...If the neoliberals have made any contribution, it's in the area of emphasizing the implications of the international economy...
...Don't try to imply that you're all of the good and none of the bad...
...How do you come to all this...
...A lot of liberals didn't understand the free market, and the neo-liberals have helped make it clear what the uses of the free market are, and that's useful...
...Over on the Senate side, led Kennedy is still one of the most effective liberals, certainly one of the most articulate...
...Differences like that should be talked out, especially now, when they are about some pretty fundamental things...
...Just look at the Democratic presidential candidates—that's a pretty liberal group, starting with John Glenn, who's a liberal-moderate candidate, and it moves liberal wards from there, to Mondale and Hart and Cranston...
...Another interesting development is that the Jews in Congress are from both parties...
...You're saying, then, that there's no apology today for Jews in Congress, qua Jews, getting together to explore and to defend Jewish interests...
...But until now, they've not been so involved in electoral politics...
...There was a study a few years ago that found a difference between the Second World War generation and the Vietnam generation, where the older generation had a much more instinctive concern for Israel's welfare than did the younger...
...My district is 13 percent Jewish, and a lot of us are from districts in the eight to 15 percent range...
...We kid about it, we make Jewish jokes about it...
...Still, my bar mitzvah was in an Orthodox synagogue, and we observed the holidays...
...Where do people get the idea that friends don't have differences...
...It's really quite ideal—the fact that we're Jews is a consideration only when we want it to be...
...People who grew up in the 40s and 50s grew up with David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, defending what appeared to be a beleaguered Israel against unremitting Arab hostility...
...So it's pretty clear that liberals made a mistake here, that we've got to understand that there's nothing inherently wrong with punishing criminals, so long as it's done in a fair way...
...It may be that the Republicans are better disciplined, and can get the nomination for someone who's not a member of the dominant ethnic group...
...I worked up a list that ought to be of special interest to those who want to make a yeshiva bocher out of Jerry Fal well...
...In my last campaign, what I got mostly was so-called small contributions, $200 and under...
...That's true in the Senate...
...If the Israeli government feels that the American Jewish community will monolithically support any action it chooses to take, then it's making a mistake...
...it's only positive, as far as I can see...
Vol. 8 • May 1983 • No. 5
