BROWN: Bayh's bottom line, it is now up to the voters to change the system. It is too screwed up to fix itself, which is why he's leaving.

And my guest tonight pretty much calls that a cop-out. I'm talking about Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank joining me right now. Congressman, not a lot of sympathy for Senator Bayh. Why not?

REP. BARNEY FRANK (D-MA), FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Well, I don't think I used the phrase cop-out. I did say I don't see how you change something by -- by quitting it or leaving it, whether it's Senator Bayh or Governor Palin.

First of all, there is a very important institutional problem here. That's the filibuster rule in the Senate. There has been a de facto anti-democratic amendment to the U.S. Constitution over the past 20 years that both parties participated in, and it's now the rule that you have to get 60 votes to pass the bill. That wasn't the case at the Constitutional Convention. It hasn't been the case for most of America. In fact, if you read the Constitution, there are direct indications to the contrary. They mention occasions when you need more than a simple majority, which is proof legally that the rule was the majority.

I wish Evan Bayh had stayed there and been one of those who would vote next January, as the Senate would have the right to do, to get rid of the filibuster.

Second, I agree there's excessive partisanship, but I don't see how leaving is going to change it. He's right. There is a pressure against compromise. You have people on the left who are on the Internet, you have people on the right who are on talk radio. They do tend increasingly these days, as opposed to years ago, to talk only with each other. People go and get reinforced, and that does make it harder to compromise. I just don't see how quitting helps.

BROWN: But how does staying there help, then? Because, I mean, as he described it, it is so driven and so controlled now by the extremes that to him, it just felt like an exercise in futility.

FRANK: Well, I think in the first place, the major thing that led to futility is the filibuster rule in the Senate. We have gotten things done in the House. I'm the chairman of the Financial Services Committee. We passed a bill to impose financial regulation. It's a bill that has been criticized by some of my friends, because, yes, we did compromise. I didn't have the votes to do everything I wanted to do.

We did have the votes to do a great deal. So if you look at what went on in the House, yes, we compromised. That was true of the environment, the energy bill. Many people on the most liberal side thought it was too weak. On the health care bill, I'm personally supportive of a single-payer system like Medicare. I long ago said, well, that's not going to happen. Let's try to work this out.

The biggest problem, frankly, and the frustration has been in the Senate, where it's the filibuster--

BROWN: All right--

FRANK: Well, but it's the combination of the filibuster and partisanship. And changing the filibuster rules, you could get to where 53 or 54 votes could pass something, would break the deadlock.

BROWN: Here's the problem, though. I mean, you know the chances of getting that changes now, certainly, are almost nil. So if you're Senator Bayh--

FRANK: No, the chances of getting the change are for people to run -- what I hope he would have said as well, come next January, I'm going to vote as a senator to change that rule, which a majority of the senators can do at the opening of the Senate. And that's not so hard. I would have said, let's all campaign and make your senator, Democrat or Republican, commit to changing the filibuster rule.

Secondly, yes, I think you should make compromises and stand up for them. And I stand up to people, my liberal friends, people on my left who say, well, you gave in too much. My answer was, we did the best we could. It's going to be better than before. We passed a credit card bill earlier last year.

BROWN: Let me just stop you for one second, because I was just doing a little research today, and this was something that you said in September that struck me. You said, quote, "the insistence on bipartisanship really goes against the notion of democracy. We had an elections in 2008. The Democrats won the presidency, significant majorities in the House and the Senate."

When Republicans hear you say something like that, I mean, why do they -- or why should they believe that you have a real interest in doing business with them? FRANK: Because of the reality. Because of the reality. I'm very proud -- the House Republicans voted, as the House Democrats did, on who was the most partisan and who was the most bipartisan member. I was the only one who showed up on both lists, because I think when there are legitimate differences, you press them, but then in the end, you compromise. And in the committee that I chair, we did put through a bill that had a lot of compromises. Unfortunately, the Republicans decided to walk away.

But again, I want to go back to you can't do anything. The credit card bill went into effect this week, which is protecting citizens from a lot of abuses that the credit card companies had been maintaining. It passed the committee that I chair, it passed the Senate. It became law. It's not everything all of the consumer advocates want. It's a significant improvement. So I reject the notion that nothing gets done.

And yes, as to partisanship, I do believe that once you have an election, the majority has the responsibility, but you can -- you carry that out in a way that is open to some kind of compromise.

BROWN: But I guess when you focus on the filibuster rules, aren't you in a sense just sort of blaming Republicans for using and for getting in the way --

FRANK: I'm sorry, Campbell. I'm sorry, Campbell, I guess I said earlier, because I anticipated you would say that, that both parties were to blame for the rule on the filibuster. I really did say that explicitly.

BROWN: All right. I stand corrected.

FRANK: OK, but I'm not being petty. I'm telling you both parties have--

BROWN: No, OK.

FRANK: -- done that, and I would hope both parties would say, no, we're going to give it up. When the Democrats were in the minority -- look, when the Republicans were the majority, they threatened to break the filibuster rule for judges. And all of my liberal friends objected.

I said, no, let's accept them at their word, but not just for judges. Let's get rid of the filibuster rule. Let it be a rule that slows things down, but not box things. That, more than partisanship, is what's stopping action in the United States Congress.

BROWN: So what happened here? Let's go a little sort of more big picture. You're running for your, I think, 16th term in November. You've been there a long time. Was it always this bad? It wasn't always this bad, was it?

FRANK: No, when I got to Congress in 1981, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill used to joke about how they were friends after 6: 00. Bob Michel was a Republican leader, and he and Tip O'Neill were friendly. What happened was, and this is a very self-acknowledged fact, Newt Gingrich decided that there was too little partisan division. And Newt Gingrich, when he wanted to get into the leadership and wanted to get into the majority, said we have to stop treating the Democrats as if they are decent people with whom we disagree, and he introduced a degree of partisanship that has been exacerbated since because both sides respond.

The other part has to do with media. You do have increasingly today -- decreasingly are people reading or watching the same source of information. People on the left and people on the right who are the activists tend to get their information and their opinions from people with whom they agree. And I know I have been told--

BROWN: The echo chamber. I agree with you--

(CROSSTALK)

FRANK: A man named John Fund from "The Wall Street Journal" in November made a speech in which he accused me of passing -- sponsoring a bill to create something called universal voter registration I'm not for. Pretty soon, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, "The Washington Times" all mentioned it. It becomes a very polarizing factor.

That has added to it. It is the fact that both sides are now, those are the most active, not the average citizen, but the most active ones are by definition the ones who have impact because they choose to have it, and I think that has reinforced it. But it really did begin with Newt Gingrich's decision consciously -- you can go back and he boasted about it at the time -- to introduce more partisan division and sharper edge, because he thought that was the only way the Republicans would get into power.

BROWN: All right, I'm almost out of time, but just tell me finally, I guess, how hopeful you are, or not at all, if that's how you feel, that there is any -- that we could possibly move in a new direction? That whether it's this--

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: -- especially with November approaching, and what you see both parties up to do in advance of this election here?

FRANK: Well, the world is not going to end in December of this year, and frankly, I'm going to give you a very clear answer. I don't want to assess hopeful or not, because I'm afraid if it doesn't look good, people may walk away.

This is a longer-term fight, to get the politics in this country back where it should be. So I don't want to be optimistic or pessimistic. I want people to say it's a very important goal, and the way to change it is to stay in there and fight for it.

BROWN: Congressman Barney Frank, always good to talk to you. Really appreciate your time.

FRANK: Thank you.