Summary of The Long Alliance By Gabriel Debenedetti: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama

By Willie M. Joseph

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of The Long Alliance By Gabriel Debenedetti: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama

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Gabriel Debenedetti's new book, The Long Alliance, explores the relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama. The true story of this relationship is significantly more layered and consequential than is widely understood. Now it is shaping a second presidential administration, and the future of the world as we know it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Oct 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215282885

Willie M. Joseph

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SUMMARY PART I

2003–2004

The strategists had some good points, he knew, but couldn't help but listen to them. Biden knew John Kerry was considering giving him the Secretary of State job. She had already decided this didn't make sense; now he wanted to be secretary of state. Joe Biden was all-in on supporting his old friend John Kerry. Biden offered Kerry advice on talking about Iraq, a war he had voted for and championed.

Biden liked the quadrennial schmoozefest, so of course he'd go to the DNC. Clinton met with Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe in Baltimore. The informal roster included Anthony Weiner, John Edwards, Harold Ford Jr., and Jon Corzine. The former president looked at Hillary Clinton's OBAMA campaign button and said, You gotta be kidding me like he thought she was wearing an OSAMA T-shirt. He wanted to make the case for international alliances and against flimsy justifications for war.

His personal story was not just objectively interesting but clearly different. He and his team were working on John Edwards' presidential campaign at the time. Axelrod: Obama would get points for honesty, but would he look too weak if he called Iraq a dumb war. Obama's campaign spent heavily on TV ads that portrayed him as an aspirational changemaker and a regular guy. Hull's support collapsed just as Obama's rose; in the final weeks before the election, Obama's polling jumped from the midteens to the forties.

In 2004, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were operating in different political galaxies. A lot would have to change for them to bend their trajectories toward each other. Kerry's party was grappling for coherence, unsure of where to find hope or inspiration in post-Clinton years. David Axelrod and David Plouffe wanted to convince John Kerry to offer Obama the keynote address slot at the convention in Boston. This guy has an unlimited future, and if we give him this opportunity that'll really help him, said Bob Shrum.

Axelrod: Obama told his strategist he wanted to tell his own story as part of America's. The next president's overwhelming obligation is clear: make America stronger, make America safer, and win the death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism, Biden said. Joe Biden's opening argument was that Bush had lost the world's trust. He followed instructions from his campaign to project martial strength to counter Republicans' accusations of wimpiness. Biden closed after ten uneventful minutes with the kind of lofty line he loved: It's time to reclaim America's soul.

Obama had been prone to thinking expansively about his place in the world since long before that summer. Keynote addresses could be fraught, too: Obama had seen Harold Ford Jr. flop that year, and kept that uncomfortable memory in mind as he sat down to write his own. Obama wrote the speech on yellow legal pads and in the bathroom at the state capitol. Axelrod was vacationing in Florence when Obama sent it to him. The Kerry campaign gave him more leeway than typical to share his words, rather than the preferred message of military strength and international responsibility.

Axelrod and Gibbs were on a mission to earn Obama's trust. The strategist tried reasoning with the candidate. Gibbs knew how Obama felt about the line and replied: you tell him. In the end, Obama reluctantly relented but promised he wouldn't forget about it.

2004–2006

Joe Biden's wife, Jill, was a quick convert to the idea of him running for president. Biden had a knack for landing squarely in the center of his party's internal ideological spectrum. He wanted to promote himself as tough-minded moderate whose heart was with the working-class folks