The recent release of a new book from CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson has sparked a fresh news cycle about how Joe Biden and the Democratic Party screwed up the 2024 election by denying his cognitive decline. That news cycle has, in turn, sparked a sizable online backlash, with left-of-center commentators, Democratic strategists and loads of social media users pushing back against the idea that new reporting on the subject is worth covering or paying attention to — and some contending that it is an outright harmful diversion at a time when President Donald Trump is tearing down our democracy.
I’m not convinced by the pushback. It’s not just always possible to talk about multiple ideas at the same time as a society, it’s necessary. And on a substantive level, it's healthy to reflect on the massive errors in judgment committed by Biden’s inner circle, elected Democrats, liberal pro-Biden activists and members of the press in order to guard against such scenarios in the future. The shocking amount of time it took for the collective delusion over Biden’s decline to be dispelled is a significant part of why we’re in the current crisis. And while the next major predicament for the party is unlikely to take exactly the same form — an elderly, diminishing president surrounded by denialist allies — there are always dilemmas in which excessive party discipline can lead to catastrophic groupthink.
'Original Sin' has loads of damning details.
Tapper and Thompson’s book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” is based on interviews with around 200 people, including Democratic lawmakers, high-level insiders in the Biden White House and campaign operatives. The book seeks to paint a more detailed picture of how Biden’s ill-advised run for a second term unfolded and how it was enabled by people with varying degrees of closeness to him, especially his staunchly loyalist inner circle.
“Original Sin” has loads of damning details. Biden’s aides reportedly labored to hide the speed of his decline by altering his schedule, reducing the length of his remarks, scripting his meetings with Cabinet officials, and even doctoring videos with “slow motion to blur the reality of how slowly he actually walked.” Biden’s physician argued with his aides about adding more rest time to his schedule. And Biden forgot the names of longtime aides, including at least one he had worked with for decades.
Outside Biden’s inner circle, Democrats who didn’t see him as often described shock at the shift in his physical appearance and temperament. Cabinet secretaries and senators questioned his ability to process policy and handle crises, and some Democrats perceived him as delegating decision-making in a way a president normally wouldn’t. All along the way, there was no serious sustained effort within the party to question Biden’s fitness for a second run. While some of this was broadly understood before, the new level of detail and texture is worthwhile stuff for the historical record.
“Original Sin” is not without serious limitations. The anonymous sourcing of the book allows many Democrats to point the finger at Biden and his inner circle and avoid accountability for their own complicity in declining to challenge Biden until it was too late.
The book’s conceit of a “cover up” is also worth questioning: Biden’s inner circle did try to obscure his changes, but his age-related decline was evident to public observers even during his first presidential run, as I noted in my own commentary as far back as 2020 in which I described his perceivable decline as a serious problem. This was obvious to many voters as well. Throughout Biden’s first term — and before the presidential debate that set in motion his decision to drop out of the race — polling indicated that voters, including many Democrats, believed Biden was too old to be president or serve for another term.
Finally, the focus on Biden’s protective “politburo” in the book conveniently allows for the press to get more of a free pass than it should, which is particularly notable as Tapper was once one of the most vociferous defenders of Biden’s cognitive status in American media.
In my eyes, the reporting in the book and the necessary, generative critiques of it are worthwhile endeavors. The timing of the book is not an attempt to “distract” from Trump’s misdeeds, but simply a function of the time required to put together a lot of reporting for a book. If it’s not your cup of tea, you can ignore the news coverage and discussion and read the roughly seven trillion other articles that come out about Trump every day. The expectation that a news cycle or round of debate on an issue or a book publishing schedule should conform to the cadences and objectives of a political comms operation is not only misguided, but it's also the same kind of mindset that helped Democrats get into this crisis. One can simultaneously focus on the challenges facing the country and the challenges facing one’s own party.
Regardless of where one stands on who deserves the most blame, the Biden delusion was an extraordinary instance of groupthink that warrants widespread reflection from Democrats. In an ideal world, developing a more detailed understanding of what was happening at the White House should be salutary, particularly as the party continues to face a widespread age problem. And many Democrats’ reluctance to put their names to criticisms of the president and his advisers underscores how vulnerable the party remains. Activists should take note and feel even more emboldened to pressure a party that hardly stands for anything except for moderate opposition to the right's positions. Parties need to be disciplined and work cooperatively with leaders in order to function, including rallying to their side when they make some mistakes. But unconditional loyalty is no virtue — and it can often pave the way for one’s own downfall.
