The Center Did Not Hold: A Biden/Obama Balance Sheet

by Robert Eisenberg

Overview

With Joe Biden stepping back into the national scene, the time is ripe for a close assessment of the administration in which he served as vice-president.

The Center Did Not Hold weighs the progressive—and not so progressive—contributions of the Obama-Biden White House across more than a hundred issues involving international relations, domestic cultural and economic matters, and social justice.

While Obama and Biden campaigned in the early 2000s on a host of progressive promises, Eisenberg’s meticulous accounting shows that, over eight years, they failed to achieve any substantial, lasting change to that end, instead perpetuating a tradition of cautious centrism.

Among the disappointments, the former president and vice-president reneged on environmental promises, pandered to lobbyists, prosecuted a record number of whistle-blowers, and failed to implement the simplest of financial reforms in response to the 2008 crisis. Under Biden’s trademark “counterterrorism plus” strategy, they oversaw tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, and escalated violence in the Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682193075
Publisher:	OR Books
Publication date:	05/13/2021
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Robert Mark Eisenberg, born and raised in Omaha, received a BA in political science from Columbia Universityand an MA in government from Harvard. He earned a law degree from Creighton University, where he later served as a professor. He has also lectured at Harvard and the University of Nebraska. Eisenberg is the author of Boychiks in the Hood, an exploration of contemporary Hasidic culture, described by the New York Times Sunday Book Review as “a rich collection of anecdotes, religious history and thumbnail portraits.” He currently resides in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

AIG

In September 2008, shortly before insurance giant American International Group (AIG) was bailed out by the American taxpayer to the tune of $170 billion—that’s $2,000 for every American family of four—Democratic Vice President nominee Joe Biden expressed his opposition to the idea. “I don’t think they should be bailed out by the federal government,” he said on NBC’s Today Show. A day later, however, Biden changed his position, saying he needed more details. The shift followed a statement by presidential candidate Barack Obama declaring that any arrangement should protect families that counted on the company’s insurance, but not its shareholders or management. “The truth is I don’t know what the bailout is yet,” Biden said in Mansfield, Ohio. “It looks like they’re lending them a little bit of money.”

Only months after receiving the bailout, AIG announced that it was awarding certain executives in its financial products division $165 million in bonuses. It struck a nerve. An outraged New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo divulged that 73 of these AIG employees were paid more than $1 million each under the plan: “AIG made more than 73 millionaires in the unit which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout. Something is deeply wrong with this outcome.”

The announcement, coupled with news that total bonus outlays for AIG key personnel could reach $1.2 billion for the company as a whole, prompted widespread protests. Furious members of the public demonstrated in the streets near AIG’s Connecticut headquarters, prompting a heavier-than-usual police presence, and AIG top executives received death threats.

On March 16, 2009, President Obama spoke out against the bonuses in a statement:

“I want to comment on the news about executive bonuses at A.I.G. This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed. Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat? In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury. I’ve asked Secretary Geithner to use that leverage and pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole [. . .] This isn’t just a matter of dollars and cents. It’s about our fundamental values. All across the country, there are people who work hard and meet their responsibilities every day, without the benefit of government bailouts or multi-million dollar bonuses. And all they ask is that everyone, from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, play by the same rules. That is an ethic we must demand. What this situation also underscores is the need for overall financial regulatory reform, so we don’t find ourselves in this position again, and for some form of resolution mechanism in dealing with troubled financial institutions, so we have greater authority to protect the American taxpayer and our financial system in cases such as this. We will work with Congress to that end.”

Obama talked the progressive talk. He promised to try to use the leverage of the total $182 billion in loans that by then had been handed out by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve as a means to block the $165 million in extra pay for AIG executives. The $165 million figure was less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the $182 billion lent by the federal government to AIG. But Obama did not succeed, even with leverage of over 1,000-to-1 in his favor.

In the end, the House passed a resolution calling for a 90 percent tax on the bonuses, but the Senate never got around to considering it, despite widespread caterwauling by the public and politicians. The bonus program was never stopped.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii

PART I—DEMOCRACY 1
Transparency 3
Binney, Drake, Loomis, Wiebe 5
Kiriakou 7
Associated Press 8
Surveillance 9
Snowden 11
Risen 13
Vacations 16
Clinton Endorsement 18
Trans-Pacific Partnership 19
Japan 23
Democracy Rankings 25
Expense Accounts 26
Democratic Party 27
Freedom of the Press 29
Speeches 30
Real Estate 32
Sanders Endorsement 33

PART II—ENVIRONMENT 35
Cap and Trade 37
Arctic 38
Oceans 39
Nuclear Energy 40
Flint 41
Air Pollution 43
Flood Standards 46
Bees 47
Monarch Butterflies 49
Dakota Access Pipeline 51
Greenhouse Gas 52
PART III—FINANCE & ECONOMY 53
Bankers 55
Rubin 57
AIG 59
Bankruptcy Law 62
Solyndra and Other Grants to Cronies 65
Geithner 68
Foreclosuregate 69
HSBC 71
Campaign Finance 73
Revolving Door 75
SEC Chairmen 79
National Debt 81
Economic Growth 82
Corporate Profits 83
Forbes 400 84
Corporate Cash Abroad 85

PART IV—FOREIGN POLICY 87
Drones 89
Arms 91
Haiti 92
Honduras 96
Blackwater 98
Libya 100
Iraq 102
Israel and Palestine 105
Bahrain 107
Egypt 109
Syria 111
Cuba 113
Afghanistan 114
North Korea 117
China 119
Special Ops 121
Yemen 124
Iran Deal 126
Burma 128
Bomber 129
Nuclear Arms Modernization 130
F-35 132
Gitmo 134
Armenian Genocide 136
Two Terms, Two Wars 137

PART V—JUSTICE 139
Gun Control 141
Police Militarization 143
Military Tribunals 146
TSA 149
Whistleblowers 152
Torture 155
Assassination of U.S. Citizens 158
NDAA and Habeas Corpus 160
Deportation 163
War on Drugs 165
Solitary Confinement 168
White-Collar Crime 171
Supreme Court Nominee Rejected 173
Clinton Email Scandal 175
Kissinger 177
Asset Forfeiture 179
Clinton Foundation 182
Clemency 183
Dreamers 185

PART VI—SOCIAL POLICY 189
Test Scores 191
Tax Code Simplification 193
Obamacare 195
Tax Cuts Retained 198
Medical Marijuana 200
Social Security 202
Militarization of Federal Agencies 205
Drug Overdose Crisis 207
GMOs 209
Unions 211
Manufacturing Jobs 213
Racial Wealth Disparity 214
Suicides 215
Race Relations 216
Income Inequality 218
Wealth Inequality 220
Infrastructure 221
Mortgage Fee Reduction 222
Minimum Wage 223
Quality of Life 224
About the Author 225

Editorial Reviews

"Part-primer, part-primal scream... In relentless detail… Eisenberg accuses Obama and [Biden] of having left ‘a lingering bad taste in the mouths of many progressives.’”
—reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement

“Cogent… [A] reality check.”
—reviewed in OpEdNews

From the Publisher