Person of Interest

All Hail Barney Frank

How “Sabertooth” reinvented himself.

When John McCain famously "suspended" his campaign and flew to Washington, he attended a meeting on the economy that included George Bush, Barack Obama, Henry Paulson, and Ben Bernanke. So who was calling the shots? Cong. Barney Frank, from Massachusetts. According to Michelle Cottle in The New Republic, "[Frank] kept jumping in, quizzing Bush officials and pressing Republican legislators on their objections to the proposal." Allegedly, Bush even had to remind him that he was running the meeting. The financial crisis has been a star turn for Frank, whose career was jeopardized in the 1980s after it was revealed that he had dated a male prostitute. Indeed, President Bush, who has nicknamed Frank "Sabertooth," may owe the passage of the bailout to him. "Frank spent enormous energy explaining the need for the legislation," Cottle writes. "He also aggressively defended the bill in the press and against colleagues from both sides of the aisle looking to scuttle it."