Point man: Holder pushed Obama priorities

It wasn't difficult for Barack Obama and Eric Holder to connect. Both were sons of immigrants. Both are Columbia Ivy Leaguers, basketball fans and prominent African-American political figures.

They first met nearly 10 years ago as dinner guests of a mutual friend in Washington who seated Holder next to Obama, newly elected to the US Senate.

On Thursday, Obama announced that Holder, one of his longest serving Cabinet members, would resign as attorney general.

"This is bittersweet," Obama said.

Holder, who will stay until his successor is confirmed, was at his side.

"In good times and in bad, in things personal and in things professional, you have been there for me," he told Obama.

Over the course of six years on the job, Holder has had his ups and downs. He also become a rare figure: a close Washington friend of the president.

As attorney general, Holder aggressively enforced the Voting Rights Act, addressed drug sentencing guidelines that led to disparities between white and black convicts, extended legal benefits to same-sex couples and refused to defend a law that allowed states to disregard gay marriages. He guided the decision to prosecute terror suspects in US civilian courts instead of by military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

All were Obama priorities.

He has also been Obama's point man in the federal response to the racial tensions in Ferguson, Missouri, where a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old black man last month.

"His greatest legacy has been in the areas of civil rights and race," said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. He said Holder aimed for a frank discussion about racial issues with a dialogue "that intrinsically defies completion and so remains unfulfilled."

While his enforcement of civil rights laws and fight against voter ID laws made him a champion of civil rights groups, they also made him a top target of conservatives, who said he improperly pushed race to the forefront and endangered the integrity of elections.

Early on, Holder was criticized for a plan, which he ultimately abandoned, to try 9/11 terrorism suspects in New York City. A botched gun-running scheme involving US agents along the southwest border, dubbed "Fast and Furious", prompted Republican calls for his resignation, and many liberals accused him of failing to hold top bankers accountable for the economic meltdown.

John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky, the authors of a critical book on Holder, Obama's Enforcer: Eric Holder's Justice Department, wrote that Obama found in Holder "both a kindred spirit and a heat shield against criticism that would often be directed at the White House".

(China Daily 09/27/2014 page11)