"Original Sin", by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

This is the famous bok by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and his co-author, documenting tyhe decline and fall of Joe Biden duirng his term as president. The point of the book is summarized in this passage: "What the world saw at Joe Biden's one and only 2024 debate was not an anomaly. It was not a cold; it was not someone who was under- or over-prepared. It was not someone who was just a little tired. It was the natural result of an 81-year-old man whose caabilities had been diminishing for years. Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify an attempt to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years."

Many Biden advisers talked with the authors and admitted that they had had serious concerns about Biden's ability to meet the challenges of a 2024 campaign. (This is similar to the many Republicans in Congress today who have serious problems with Trump that they are willing to talk about privately, but will not say publicly.) The excuse the Biden advisers use for not sppeaking out is that his decision-making ability was still intact. But this is only a part of being president; the other part is communicating the reasons for your decisions to the public. And Biden was a horrible communicator; he simply had no communication skills whatsoever as he neared the end of his term. It had gotten so bad that he often could not even complete a coherent thought, often getting lost in mid-sentence.

I've often wondered why Biden's dvisers let him do that early debate with Trump. The book answers the question by saying that the polls showed the public had serious doubts about Biden's aiblilty to serve a second term, and so the debate was planned to demonstrate that Biden was in fact up to the job.

After the debate Biden went on natonal TV to try to rehabilitate his image. Instead, he confirmed his incompetence when, in reposne to the simple question, "Did you watch the denbate?", he said "I don't think I did." Huh? You're not even sure whether or not you watched the debate? After this there was no question as to his lack of competence.

What is so sad and pathetic is that both Joe and Jill biden still believe to this day that Joe could have beaten Trump in the 2024 election. Talk about delusional! What is equally pathetic is the grudge held by the Bidens against Nancy Pelosi, for (implicitly) suggesting that Joe re-consider his run after the disastrous debate. Their resentment was so severe that when Pelosi broke her hip in Luxembourg in December of 2024 and underwent hip replacement surgery, neither Joe nor Jill Biden called her to wish her well. So much for Biden as the great empathizer.

Biden's advisers knew he was going downhill and increasingly during his term they limited his press availability. His average of nine press conferences a year was fewer than every post-WW2 president except for Reagan and Nixon. By contrast, Truman had 41 a year and the first Bush had 36. (Had Biden done more press conferences he surely would have been better prepared at answering questions during the horrid debate.)

Biden's advisers even limited his availability to his biggest donors and supporters. At small gatherings of donors, Biden was using a teleprompter instead of the usual informal remarks. Imagine, a donor who had given as much as $500,000 for a meet-and-greet with the president had to settle for canned remarks read from a teleprompter!

What is tragic is that Biden's legacy will now be that through his hubris he gave us another disastrous four years of Trump as president. Had he kept his (implicit) promise to only serve one term, the Democrats might have settled on a worthy candidate who could have beaten Trump, and Biden would then have had a legacy of some accomplishments, putting him somewhere in the middle of all presidents in the rankings. As it is, he will be near the bottom, at least for the near future.