[tashi]

Well, since lack of bank regulation almost destroyed the economy a little while ago, having a job that comes with incentives to reduce regulations is qualitatively different than those other options: more morally complicated, more dangerous.

The interviewer may have expected that fact to be self-evident to his readers, and that Barney Frank's unwillingness to engage with it, and to try to deflect in order to "win the argument," would speak for itself.

[fwlr]

Maybe that was their plan, yeah. Barney’s argument seemed to be “if you’re tough on banks as a legislator it’s good to go work at a bank after leaving Congress; if you’re soft on banks as a legislator it’s bad to go work at a bank after leaving Congress”. If you approach it with sufficient distrust of politicians/bankers and insufficient understanding of the regulation I can see that argument being unconvincing.

(Unimportant nitpick: one option being more morally complicated and more dangerous than the others is a quantitative difference, not a qualitative difference.)