Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s deeply reported book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, takes a sledgehammer to Joe Biden’s legacy, already in grave disrepair. Claiming to have interviewed more than 200 sources around the 46th president, the CNN anchor and the Axios correspondent have written a necessary and deeply disturbing account of the Biden White House. For anyone interested in politics and Shakespearean tragedy, there’s something on every page.
For supporters of Biden’s presidency and its considerable legislative achievements, this is an extremely grim read. Biden is both the most effective Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson and the man who helped usher Donald Trump back into the Oval Office by not stepping aside for a stronger candidate. The Biden presented in the book is both familiar and tragic, a King Lear on the Potomac with a Lady McBeth at his side in Jill Biden. The small cohort of longtime aides, dubbed the Politburo by insiders, protecting the president from the press, the American people and, it seems, reality, could be cast in a community theater version of The Death of Stalin.
“I blame his inner circle and I blame him,” one senior administration official told Tapper and Thompson after the election. “What utter and total hubris not to step aside and be a one-term president, as he said he would, and have an open primary when there was time to let the process play out.”
Hubris is a theme that runs throughout the book. Tapper and Thompson present compelling evidence for a plot to cover up for an octogenarian politician in steep physical and mental decline. It was an ineffective and inane effort, but the president’s team, it seems, really did try to prop up a visibly aged man, who had carried decades of personal grief and was facing new family drama that would have broken most. There is an unforgettable eyewitness description of Biden as Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, all skin and bones, and short of breath. One can’t help but wonder how Team Biden thought running for reelection was the best thing for the man, not to mention the country. It was malpractice and a scandal of the highest order. Given what’s depicted in these pages, it’s more than fair to ask: Who was leading America after 4:30 p.m., when, sources told Tapper and Thompson, the president’s workday often ended after the early bird special?
“Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board,” one person in the know told Tapper and Thompson. Most presidents delegate some authority, but this sounds almost like Woodrow Wilson-in-a-stupor-level stuff.
One of the many questions that haunts the pages: How far back was Biden sliding into infirmity and no longer up to the task? Aging is a complicated process that differs for everyone. But family tragedy seems, understandably, to have played a role here. There is some evidence in the book that points to the death of Beau Biden, back in 2014, as an inflection point. “Before Beau died, he was 100 percent sharper,” one senior Biden White House official told Tapper and Thompson. “Beau’s death wrecked him. Part of him died that never came back.”
At the 2020 Democratic National Convention, signs were there as well, according to the book. One top Democrat described seeing videos of Biden and thinking, “This was like watching Grandpa who shouldn’t be driving.” But the real cliff seems to have been reached in 2022 or 2023, when Biden’s shuffling and other physical effects of his age became pronounced and inescapable. Descriptions of a confused and forgetful Biden fill these pages. Most of the sources here seem to be folks sympathetic toward the president, but he comes off more addled and confused as his presidency continues. Time comes for us all, but not all of us have the responsibilities of the presidency.
Understandably, the stress of his son Hunter Biden’s scandal-ridden life seems also to have taken a toll on the president. One cabinet secretary described Hunter’s trial for gun possession to Tapper and Thompson as a “five-hundred-pound weight dropped on the president’s head.” Joe Biden’s story of personal loss — his first wife and infant daughter killed in a car crash, the death of Beau — has been one of the things that made him an empathic figure. No one could doubt he understood and felt pain; it was there on his face. For much of the last decade or more, Joe Biden has had to worry about losing a third child, first to drugs and then to the criminal justice system. The pressures Biden faced, on the job and in his home, would age any human being.
The debacle of the 2024 presidential debate is traced in great detail. For this was the moment when the jig was up. America saw what had been kept hidden: a man long past his prime, but still inexplicably auditioning to retain the most important job in the world. It was undeniable and damning and not just a bad night. This was one of the most stunning moments in recent presidential history, when the scales fell from a nation’s eyes. A high-powered Democratic operative described it to me as “like watching someone die.” Tapper was a moderator and writes that the performance was even worse in person. At one point, after another horrific Biden gaffe (“Look, if… we finally beat Medicare”), Tapper’s colleague Dana Bash passed him a note that read: “He just lost the election.”
Some who dared to speak the uncomfortable truths about Biden’s condition are owed an apology for the backlash they faced. Congressman Dean Phillips, who rang the alarm and tried to run against Biden in a primary last year, only to be shut out and shunned by the party. Special Counsel Robert Hur, who declined to prosecute Biden for his mishandling of classified documents, and described the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur’s integrity was attacked by partisans on both sides of the aisle — simply for being honest and doing his duty.
The figure looming off-camera for much of the book is Donald Trump, and part of the story here is how destructive the negative partisanship of the MAGA moment has become — the political equivalent of a toxic speedball of rage, fear, and resentment. The ends justify the means, the thinking goes. Trump was such a danger to democracy that any tactic necessary was needed to keep him out of office. When reporters or public officials like Phillips and Hur brought up Biden’s age, they were set upon in, well, Trumpian style. Team Biden’s playbook: Deny, deflect, and attack. But deceiving the American people about a candidate’s health and mental acuity was sure to backfire. They were asking the American voter to believe the White House, not their own lying eyes, about a man deteriorating before them. (Biden’s stage IV cancer diagnosis, announced the day before Original Sin was released, only raises more questions and eyebrows.)
If a candidate other than Trump had been running, would they have really tried such an outrageous ploy? At least in part, Biden seems to have convinced himself that only he could beat Trump and thus was not ready to honor his campaign pledge to be a “bridge” to the next generation and pass the torch. Gov. Jerry Brown may have said it best, when reflecting on Biden’s decision to stick around: “Politics is addictive. It’s exciting. It’s a kind of psychic cocaine.”
History will judge Biden’s long-term impact, and Original Sin is but the first draft. His role in the Senate, as vice president, and as president will be chewed over for decades to come. There’s a lot there, much of it very good, some bad, and more than a little bit ugly. He’s been one of the most consequential politicians of his era. His achievements are real and profound. But this last chapter was brutal, unfortunate, and entirely preventable.
www.rollingstone.com
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