If it’s possible in these inflammatory times to ponder a question about American politics without igniting an inferno of accusation, contempt, and derision, then this is my query:
Were Joe Biden and Donald Trump the best the nation had to offer last year? Were you, like many voters, “despondent that in a country of three hundred forty million people, (we) had to choose between these two men”?
Perhaps you are pleased with results of last November’s election, perhaps you are not. Regardless of level of satisfaction, perhaps we can agree that the two major political parties left us hung out on dilemma of deception: one candidate, now the occupant of the Oval Office, for whom truth seems secondary to advantage; and the other, his predecessor, who promised to be a one-term president and then, when hubris erased that promise, tried to hide the toll aging had exacted from him.
“Original Sin,” a solid piece of reporting clearly told, tracks the decline of Joe Biden from the end of his vice-presidency in 2017, when he was still a sharp septuagenarian, albeit one prone to spoken gaffes and other verbal malarkey, to July 21, 2024, when, as an octogenarian enfeebled by a stiffening body and softening mind, the latter displayed for all to see during a disastrous debate with Donald Trump, he shut down his campaign for a second term and tossed the keys to the Democrats’ future – and the country’s – to Kamala Harris.
The book – developed from more than 200 interviews – is a damning indictment. Biden’s vainglorious (and delusional) belief that only he could defeat Trump is the least of the culprits. Enmeshed in a web of complicity, willful ignorance, and the primal motive of career politicians – self-preservation – the guilty abettors include Biden’s family, his campaign team, and elected Democrats of all stripes. They blinded themselves to Biden’s stumbles, deafened their ears to his mumbles, and held themselves mute even as Biden’s fall hastened Trump’s rise.
The narrative is rich with anecdotes – Biden not recognizing actor George Clooney at a Hollywood fundraiser, the distress of staffers watching Biden freeze gape-mouthed during the debate – but the larger message that may or may not be of service to nation is that Biden’s deception deepens the mistrust most of the populace has of politicians.
“One of the great lessons from 2024,” said former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, is that “never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they’re seeing is not true.”
If “Original Sin” contains a durable wisdom, it is rooted in this observation by the authors: “… the Constitution isn’t necessarily about optimal requirements (for the presidency). It’s about minimum requirements. The US Constitution does not require politicians to be self-aware, or brave, or selfless.”
It is up to us, then – we, the people – to impose such a requirement.