that the pakistani taliban made of the government in order to set the stage for peace talks. so the question i think is are we moving from a moment where the pakistani government always responded and had to play toward domestic political consumption, at least with the rhetoric, but the same time helped the united states to a point now at which they are giving in demands of the pakistani taliban and setting the stage for peace talk with extremists? that will be a particularly troubling. chris: do you admit we re at a water shed here, charles? we have a water shed every other week with pakistan. no, it s not. it s a chronic situation. this attack is worse than others because of the number of casualties. if it was an accident, appalling breakdown of communications. if it was in any way deliberate, it s breakdown of judgment. but i think it s chronic. the problem is as mara indicated the pakistanis are playing a double game. jay carney is right. we have locked in an embration
loans given out promiscuously. if he sounded the alarm on freddie mac, i would say it was the quietest alarm barney frank has ever sounded. the aftermath of the crash, he helped shepherd controversial reregulating of the financial service industry that parially bears his name. the dodd-frank law, supporters say minimizing the likelihood of another crash. is itics say it s deepened the recession. he had his closest call in 2010 when the tea party republican sean bilack had a credittal fight against him and forced frank to lend his own campaign $200,000. it may have discouraged him from election battles to come. chris? thanks. the u.s., nato and afghanistan are engaged in diplomatic damage control tonight. over saturday s airstrike that killed 24 pakistani soldiers. tossed around and directed at all the players, along with the old standby the fog of
so i think congressional democrats looking for a hand-up, from president obama, are not likely to get it. he could have reverse coat tails. chris: less than a minute, charles. democrats need, as mara point out, net gain of 25 seats next november to regain control of the house. do they get there? do they gain seats? lose seats? what do you see right now? i m not sure they will gain any but they certainly aren t going to get control of the house. on the other hand, they have no chance of coming back. i said newt gingrich had no chance of coming back. take it with a grain of salt. don t rely on me. look at frank. a guy whose whole life is to be a congressman and he decides he is not going to run. why? a, he might lose because he has a lot more conservative people in the district. but b, he knows, in his heart, he is not going to have control. if he were in the minority in the house, there are few jobs in washington less important. chris: that is it for the
pretend to try to be nice to people i don t like. now, some of you may not think i ve been good at it, but i ve been trying. chris: massachusetts congressman barney tank announcing he will retire after 16 terms in the house. we re back now with the panel. mara, what should we make of barney frank s retirement? he is 71 and he has been redistricted and he has a lot of new constituents and he said it was too much for him to campaign and win over new folks. is that the story or more to it? that s part of it. he had to lend himself a lot of money and he had a tough race last time. if barney fran thought he would be the chairman of the banking committee in 2012 he might run again. but a sign that democrats think while they might pick up some seats, 25 which is what they need for the majority is maybe a bridge too far. one of the things we re looking at now is how many retirements there will be. that is a sign of how the party views the pros text.
re tire. chris: ouch. steve, let me i m skipping mara she kind of got into this already. barney franks becomes the 18th house democrat not run again either through retirement, resignation, seeking other office. there are nine republicans, 18 democrats, nine republicans. what does it tell you about how or does it tell you anything about the democrats view of their chances of taking back the house? i think it does. i think in part that is because the 2012 political landscape looks more like 2010 than it did in 2008. and you have this added difficultfy for congressional democrats. president obama made it clear he wants to run against congress for reason understandable to all of us. it makes sense. he will say despite i m atop washington i run against washington and i m not like these people and all of the things i said about hope and change to rein washington in, i couldn t effect them because of the people in congress.