The Death of Moral Superiority: Original Sin and the Biden Decline

Before reading Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book Original Sin, detailing Former President Biden’s decline and the subsequent actions taken by his inner circle to shield it from the American people, I was a skeptic. In fact, I still am.

There are legitimate gripes surrounding this book (see: Jon Stewart’s tirade from May). Even if the authors didn’t receive their intel until after the election, they waited to compile this damning information into a book rather than releasing the news when, you know, news should be released. That doesn’t sit well with me. 

Stewart’s segment mused on the journalistic malpractice evident in the book’s marketing; CNN endlessly plugged their anchor’s book, even while breaking the news of Biden’s cancer diagnosis. That said, he delivers a more substantive critique in that vein, so I will refrain from that tangent here.

Irrespective of these critiques, though, the book is chilling. As a result, the left has done their share of “Monday morning quarterbacking,” and, presumably, there will be more to follow. These hindsight observations generally follow a similar thread: “Biden was too old;” “he shouldn’t have run again;” “he was never going to win.”

However, I want to focus on something less obvious. Tapper and Thompson detail a complex “cover-up,” orchestrated by Biden’s inner circle – senior party and cabinet leadership. And their actions severely damage one of the left’s most frequently used, effective arguments: we’re the party of morals.

Tapper and Thompson’s reporting, in addition to the Hur Report, positions Biden as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” So it hardly seems fair to levy tremendous blame on an aging, addled elder for deceitful conduct. But Biden’s inner circle, from chief advisor Mike Donilon and his colleagues to Jill and Hunter Biden, shouldn’t get off the hook. 

I liked President Biden’s policies. And I share a belief echoed within the halls of the Biden White House: policy outcomes are far more important than communication and presentation. As such, I truly believe the President could have delivered popular, beneficial policies even with his limitations. After all, if the book taught me anything, chief advisors and an inner circle are the primary decision makers anyway. Did Biden reach different conclusions now then 10 years ago? Probably not. He had the same advisors around him providing input. That does not make it right though. 

I have had elderly grandparents with poor memories, and I wouldn’t let them campaign for months, give hour-long speeches and seek four more years in the hardest job this side of the Atlantic. Tapper’s conversations with largely anonymous insiders reveal that, behind closed doors, many in Washington shared that sentiment. Congresspeople with elderly, ill parents felt Biden reminded them of their aging parents. Many Americans have a similar story.

For that reason, it is hard to reconcile how people who loved the President – professionally, personally or both – allowed him to make the monumental decision to run for a second term. And, more crucially, it begs the question: how can those same people, leading officials in a Democratic administration, be agents of the “party of morality”?

In fairness, the Trump administration has them beat in the race to the moral bottom. Trump is a convicted felon who cheated on his wife with an adult film actress. Most of his supporters in Congress refused to condemn the insurrectionists on January 6th, all of whom he pardoned. But I have begun rolling my eyes when the left talks about morals. Sen. Cory Booker, for example, has called the last few months “a moral moment,” a choice not between “right or left,” but “right and wrong.” He may very well be right. But that argument rings hollow when Biden’s decline enters the picture.

When Trump called Biden’s presidential agenda “against God,” Biden was quick to respond: “[Trump’s words] show us a man willing to stoop to any low for political gain.” True? Probably. Hypocritical given Biden and his team’s hubris and detachment from his physical impediments? Yeah.

In fact, the taste is even more sour given Biden’s pitch to voters. He was the normal, truthful, return-to-decency candidate. And while he lived up to that in many ways, the last six months of his presidency hampered that perception significantly. Tapper and Thompson seem to absolve Biden himself of singular blame. He was overconfident, arrogant – yes – but so is every major figure in D.C. Not knowing when to give up, in fact, is a Biden calling card. Accordingly, it should surprise nobody that he maintained that same Rocky-like mindset throughout 2024: “It’s not how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

The central problem arose, as the authors tell it, when Biden’s closest advisors took that belief as doctrine. Tapper describes it as an almost theological faith in Biden’s capacity to rise to the occasion. This unyielding loyalty – something I detest about the modern Republican Party – infuriates me.

Democrats have spent years ridiculing – for good reason – President Trump’s parade of loyalist yes-men. Sensible politicians should always have people willing to challenge them; it was among the shrewdest parts of Lincoln’s administration. Yet, Original Sin tells of a loyalist inner circle, unyielding in their fealty to President Biden and unwilling to engage with negative information. Part of the blame lies with Biden, who was Obama’s sounding board and should have known to surround himself with potential dissenters. However, his chief advisors did him a tremendous disservice.

One of my least favorite things about the new-age Republican Party is its relationship to criticism. Trump explodes at and fires people who disagree with him; he changes his opinions about people based solely on how well they compliment him. That said, the Democrats who have expressed this critique need to look in the mirror.

I’m not blaming Sen. Booker or Gov. Newsom or Sec. Buttigieg for this. As Tapper and Thompson detail, they didn’t engage with Biden much and relied on his advisors to inform them of the President’s condition. But the efforts of a few to shield the President’s decline from the public means the entire Democratic Party has to deal with it. The left’s critique of the overly loyal right feels trite; pot, meet kettle.

As per the book, Biden had little reason to question his chances in 2024, even as late as early July. He never received legitimate polling information about his chances in 2024. In fact, one chapter of the book that stuck with me was Chuck Schumer’s meeting with Biden in mid-July – just days before the latter dropped out.

Schumer, and Democratic leaders, realized that Biden’s chief aide who helmed his re-election campaign – Mike Donilon – was not giving the President a full picture. Donilon would receive polling data and then “interpret” it (very generous way of putting it). Those interpretations were largely out-of-touch with reality; Donilon told the President the race was 50-50. Schumer, however, took the opportunity to shoot the President straight. His data had Biden losing soundly, with a near-zero percent change of victory.

Biden, to his credit, took those numbers under advisement. Schumer also told the President winning the nomination would be ugly and fracture the party. A week later, Biden was out. He left when he realized his prospects were untenable and his candidacy could decimate the Democrats down the ticket at the polls. This seems like a tick in the positive direction. Yet that decision came months too late thanks to a cacophony of deceitful loyalists – brighter and less cartoonish than Trump’s, but extremely reckless, narrow-minded and dangerous, nonetheless.

Similarly, Democrats criticize Trump’s monetization of his office. He unveils new shoes, colognes, Bibles, and cryptocurrencies to cash in on his brand as President. Yet, the left’s moral reckoning must extend to this sphere as well. Senior Advisor to Biden Mike Donilon asked for, and received, $4 million to run Biden’s re-election campaign. The next highest-paid staffer didn’t make one-quarter of that salary. The willingness of the Biden’s to bankroll that ridiculous asking price is just another point of contrast between the moral arbiters Democrats claim to be and the often disappointedly hypocritical people they are. Again, I don’t want to draw a moral equivalency between this behavior and January 6th, or Trump’s felony convictions. Still, it’s a really bad look.

Speaking in broad strokes, the Democrats – even if primarily the five or six prime actors in Biden’s circle – have to atone for three real “sins” here beyond Biden running for re-election (what Tapper and Thompson call the “Original Sin”). One: Biden’s family should have put an end to this for his sake. Two: their actions contradict their claim of moral superiority. And finally, three: they must confront the loyalty structure that allowed this to happen – the same one that facilitates Trump’s ridiculous agenda.

People my age have heard the tagline, “this is the most important election of our lives” three times now. Trite as it may be, though, Trump’s first half-year, and his age, mean 2026 and 2028 will be America’s last chance to affirm or rebuke Trump – his brand and his influence.

In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent tells Bruce Wayne “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” The Joker brings Dent, the DA of Gotham, down to his level, transforming him into a murderer. Tapper and Thompson’s book reveals an eerie parallel. Trump’s blatantly immoral, corrupt actions coincided with Democrats becoming the very things they detest about Trump: power-seeking, detached from reality, and flagrantly dishonest – with themselves and the American people.

In the end, Dent is still no Joker; Biden and Democratic leadership are not Trump. But Dent fell; and so did the Democrats. Tapper and Thompson’s book forces those Democrats to reconcile with and reflect on their status as self-perceived moral arbiters.

Hopefully, in addressing that issue in the town square over the next few years, a better message with a better messenger will emerge. Regardless, Democrats have a lot of work to do.

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