"Original Sin": A book that portrays Biden's deterioration during the presidency

New YorkIn Christian theology, original sin begins when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. But Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson chronicles a different kind of fall from grace. The cover image is a black and white portrait of Joe Biden with a pair of hands covering his eyes. The story of this new book is about the danger of willful ignorance.

"The original sin of the 2024 election was Biden's decision to run for reelection, followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive decline," Tapper and Thompson write. On the night of June 27, 2024, Democratic voters turned up in shock and horror at the first presidential debate: Donald Trump spouted a string of audacious nonsense, while Biden, pale and slack-jawed, struggled to deliver his own.

Most of the president's appearances had become controlled affairs. For at least a year and a half, Biden aides had gone out of their way to help an octogenarian president who was increasingly frazzled and confused. According to Original Sin, Donors and alarmed politicians who wanted to know Biden's cognitive status were not informed. Others had daily evidence of the Democrat's deterioration, but didn't want to believe it.

Biden's Deterioration

In a note, the authors explain that they interviewed some 200 people, including high-level officials, "some of whom may never acknowledge having spoken to us, but who know the truth in these pages," they say.

The result is a damning account of how Biden's entourage enabled his decision to run for a second term. The authors review the problems that arose from the former president's original sinThe sidelining of Vice President Kamala Harris, attacks on journalists about Biden's apparent fatigue and mental state, and an uninformed and helpless American public. "He was a source for the authors," the withering accusation attributed to "a prominent Democratic strategist" who also "publicly defended Biden." Some Democrats, especially those who didn't see the president that often, relied on comments from those close to him for reassurance. here because of the threat of a second Trump term, they should have brought these fears closer to reality, not further away."

Biden announced he would be a candidate for reelection in April 2023. He had turned eighty in November and was already the greatest president in history. his wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash, two aneurysm surgeries in 1988, the death of his son Beau in 2015, the endless troubles caused by his son Hunter, a drug addict in recovery under investigation by the Justice Department

Winning the 2020 election was, for him and his close circle of family and advisers, a sign that he was special. They maintained "an almost religious faith in Biden's ability to get back on his feet," the authors write.

When Biden announced his presidential candidacy, he was 76, and his legacy weighed even more than his old age. But by 2023, this had reversed itself. His decline was difficult to distinguish from his long reputation for gaffes, rambling remarks, and a habit of forgetting aides' names. But people who didn't see Biden every day were increasingly surprised. They commented on how his voice had weakened and how his walk had become a shuffle.

Those close to Biden developed some techniques to manage (or disguise) what was happening: they restricted urgent matters to the hours between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and instructed his speechwriters to keep speeches short, so as not to spend too much time on his feet. One. When recording videos, his aides sometimes filmed "in slow motion to hide how slowly he actually walked."

According to a book by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, Biden aides decided against having him take a cognitive test in early 2024. Tapper and Thompson cite a doctor who worked as an adviser to the White House Medical Unit: "disclose."

It has never been entirely clear how much of this confusion was a deliberate plot. Tapper and Thompson identify two main groups that closed ranks around Biden: the family and one of the close aides known as "the Politburons," which included his strategist Mike Donilon and adviser Steve Ricchetti. The family fostered Biden's view of himself as a historical figure. Instead, its members pointed to Biden's legacy to the office and the competent people around him. The napping, the whispering, the shuffling—all of it just had to do with the "performative" parts of the job.

Lack of communication weakened Biden

Tapper and Thompson disagree and defend Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden's handling of classified material and who in his February 2024 report described the president as a "likable, well-intentioned, older man with a bad memory." Biden and his team bridled and tried to "smear him as an unprofessional right-wing attacker," but the authors defend their famous line. They emphasize that it is incumbent on a special counsel to spell out how the target of an investigation would likely play to a grand jury, and that what Hur wrote about Biden was true.

Of course, in an election like 2024, when the differences between the candidates are so stark and the stakes so high, nearly all information is viewed through the lens of "Will this help my team win?" But even competent policymaking couldn't compensate for the woeful failure to communicate with the American people. In a democracy, this is a tragedy, especially if you believe, as Biden does, that a second Trump term would endanger the very existence of that democracy.

Earlier this month, Biden appeared on the The View for accepting some responsibility for Trump's victory: "I was in charge." In Original SinTapper and Thompson describe waking up the morning after the 2024 election thinking that if only he had stayed in the campaign, he would have won. "That's what the polls suggested, he said over and over again," the authors write. There was just one problem with the reasoning: "His own pollsters told us these polls didn't exist."