The Long Alliance

New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti provides an inside look at the complicated, co-dependent, and at-times rocky relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, which has shaped Democratic politics over the past 16 years.

Delving deeper than the bromance narrative that's held the public eye, The Long Alliance examines the past, present, and future of this historic partnership—its twists and turns, ruptures and reunions, and the pivotal moment in each man's legacy at which we've arrived.

Obama needed Biden's experience to help him win in 2008, and he relied on him heavily during his first years as president. But their relationship soured over policy disagreements and Biden's blundering approach to Congress and voters. Then Obama's decision to support Hillary Clinton's nomination in 2015 created a rift that lasted for years. Now, in an ironic twist, President Biden is in the position to restore Obama's legacy—one that Donald Trump spent years trying to dismantle—and to implement a more radical, progressive agenda that the former president could only have dreamed of.

The real tale of this relationship is significantly more complex, dramatic, and consequential than is generally believed. The original mismatch between the know-it-all worshipper of legislative procedure and the hot-shot political Messiah moulded not just four different presidential campaigns and two different political parties, but also wars, a devastating near-depression, the lives of millions of immigrants, and movements for social equality. Now their relationship is shaping a second presidential administration, and the future of Democratic politics.

‘Gabriel Debenedetti is simultaneously one of the smartest and most dogged reporters in Washington, and he has pieced together a master narrative of the complex relationship between two presidents whose partnership held together through a series of economic and political crises. The Obama-Biden dynasty has won three of the last four presidential elections, and Debenedetti's story reveals the whole scope of its birth, growth, and struggle to save democracy.’
—Jonathan Chait, New York Times bestselling author of Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail

‘Gabriel Debenedetti's reporting on the Biden-Obama relationship is a tour-de-force, weaving together the political and personal dynamics that have bonded these two presidents and, at times, led to significant tension. It is a gripping tale of power in modern America and how it really works, told by someone who knows the players and inside stories better than anyone.’
—Robert Costa, #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Peril

‘What progress is possible in a country defined by partisan stalemate? This is the immersive, indelible account of a twenty-year working friendship almost precisely coincident with the emergence of a new and often maddening American politics. Barack Obama and Joe Biden assumed their presidencies with different political strengths, instincts, and ideals, but though each believed he could outmanoeuvre opposition and achieve lasting generational change, each also quickly found himself contemplating legacies which, though historic, could seem painfully piecemeal—including to the presidents themselves.’
—David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth