Joe Biden’s ‘Original Sin’ and What it Says About the 2020 Election and Beyond

Revelations about Biden’s decline speak volumes about how Trump should be covered

The disclosure that former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer adds to the personal and political indignities he faces.

Biden’s cancer comes on the heels of a damning portrait of his cognitive and physical decline chronicled in the book, “Original Sin,” by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios. The book offers insight into the declining capacity of a person who became the oldest man ever to become president.

During his presidency, he was insulated from exposure by aides and family who protected him and kept his decline private. Democrats might be excused for ignoring evidence of Biden’s decline in the first years of his presidency. By 2023, the book reports that Biden’s cognitive and physical decline was rapid and inescapable.

By year three of his term, Biden had become what Special Counsel Robert Hur described: “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” It was for that reason Hur, tasked with investigating the classified materials found in Biden’s home and office, concluded that charges wouldn’t be filed against Biden because “it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict (Biden)—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Democrats called Hur’s assessment false, partisan and gratuitous. They deflected with “whataboutism” and went after Trump’s egregious taking and storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. They did everything but listen to the tapes to hear for themselves the diminished Biden they finally were forced to acknowledge after the disastrous June 2024 presidential debate.

The book, the release of the Hur interview recordings and the news coverage of Biden’s decline raise at least three takeaways that are important.

The first is that Joe Biden, even with whatever impairments he had, still was the better candidate in 2020. Biden’s accomplishments in his first two years aren’t just politically impressive - winning passage of major pieces of legislation in a divided Congress - but started to turn the country to the future. The big investments in rebuilding America’s infrastructure, technology innovation and manufacturing, renewable energy and other areas have delivered major benefits for the country. Biden’s policies helped spark the creation of 15 million jobs, wage gains that helped the lowest-paid workers stay ahead of inflation and promoted the highest work force participation rate among those in their prime working years in two decades. He restored America’s leadership around the globe and gave allies renewed faith in American values.

Biden had his failures, some of his own making, some that were at least partially the result of his predecessors’ choices. Biden often was slow to acknowledge the challenges and fumbled some of the solutions, especially on inflation and the porous southern border. In the end, though, he handed off an economy called “the envy of the world,” with inflation coming under control and illegal border crossings at historic low levels.

That is far different from the country he inherited, one in which the economy was in tatters, the pandemic still out of control and an out-going president promoting the Big Lie of election theft. Biden won in 2020, and America is a better country for it.

Had Trump been re-elected in 2020, America would be a much weaker country today because it would be without Biden’s legislative accomplishments. Trump may undo some Biden programs; on many others, though, he will take credit for what his predecessor put in motion.

If there is hope that Americans have their heads above water come 2029 when this term ends it will be only because the economic foundation Biden left to Trump is strong enough to withstand the disastrous agenda of Trump and congressional Republicans.

Certainly, Biden should not have been a candidate in 2024 and Democrats (and Biden’s aides and family) should have demanded that decision in 2023. Had Biden bowed out, he would have been remembered as the most effective one-term president in history. Had Biden announced a decision not to run in time to allow a robust Democratic primary, Kamala Harris or any other candidate would have better defined themselves, built deeper relationships with voters and made it harder for Trump to find his way.

The second takeaway is that what we know today about Joe Biden we long have known about Trump. If books are to be the guide to judging Biden, there are libraries filled with books by former Trump top aides - from Cabinet members to chiefs of staff - who call him a “moron” and worse. They relate stories of Trump’s anger that made stable and experienced people fearful that he would provoke war with China, North Korea or any other country that he disliked. Together, the revelations about Trump show an unhinged and unprepared person taking on the world’s issues through a lens of personal grievances and biases.

His incoherent ramblings and mercurial outbursts have become more common and more bizarre. He long has had memory lapses, forgetting names of close aides, the cities in which he is appearing and the states he won and lost in earlier campaigns. Those who point to Biden’s mangling of names and forgetfulness should recall that last fall, Trump challenged Biden to take a cognitive test after bragging about acing his own. Ironically, he repeatedly mangled the name of the White House doctor who administered the test.

Lindsey Graham, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and a host of now-close Trump allies knew Trump was unfit for service in 2015 and 2016 and weren’t shy about saying so. In the last eight years, Trump has proven them right. Yet, Trump hasn’t changed; his Republican critics did. It’s not likely “Original Sin” and the Biden revelations will give the Trump loyalists incentive enough to be candid as Trump declines. It might, though, encourage the media and others to look at his ramblings, anger-driven policies and memory lapses as something more than “Trump being Trump.”

The third takeaway is this: It’s time for voters to have more and better information about presidential candidates. Americans should demand that presidential candidates submit to a full range of cognitive and physical examinations by independent and qualified physicians and that those physicians make public a summary of the results.

Likewise, the public deserves a clearer understanding of a candidate’s finances and business dealings. A candidate may have legitimate reasons to keep some information private, but a qualified team of financial auditors certainly could propose a disclosure form that provides useful and meaningful information without compromising too much of the privacy of candidates and their families.

Biden has tried to counter the revelations with a round of media interviews. He should stop and leave the public stage gracefully. As it is, he has become a Greek tragic hero, a person of noble character who is brought down by his own actions, even those committed without evil intent. Biden and those closest to him thought he could cheat reality and because of that the legacy of a decent person will be forever tarnished.