Original Sin summary

To understand Biden’s decision to run for reelection, you must understand his personal mythology. It can be summed up in the phrase: “Get up!”

In Biden’s first memoir, Promises to Keep, he wrote that “this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle…. The art of living is simply getting up after you’ve been knocked down.” 

Another key piece in Biden’s decline and its coverup was the inner circle surrounding him. Every president enters the White House with a team of loyalists –⁠ but Biden’s was particularly insular. Internally, they were referred to as the “Politburo” –⁠ an unflattering reference to the Soviet policymaking committee. 

The Politburo consisted of Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reed, and Mike Donilon –⁠ the aide whose name Biden forgot in 2019⁠. Donilon was particularly protective of Biden, and Biden valued his advice so much that other aides joked he could get Biden to start a war if he wanted. Ricchetti had been Biden’s chief of staff during Beau’s illness, and all of his children ended up working in the Biden administration. Finally, Reed was a policy wonk known as Biden’s “security blanket.” 

While the Politburo and other aides protected Biden, and the world, from the truth, so too did White House physician Kevin O’Connor. O’Connor documented Biden’s stiff gait and frequent coughing in mild terms. Notably, however, there was never any mention of a cognitive exam. To other physicians, that seemed strange. It’s widely considered standard practice to begin performing cognitive tests once a patient turns sixty-five. Biden was a day away from turning seventy-nine –⁠ and he’d already begun to show signs of memory loss. The only reason not to perform a cognitive test was if you were afraid of the results.

Aides were constantly scrambling to cover for him. When he misspoke, they rushed to make excuses and said that Biden “struggles to communicate nuance,” especially when he feels something strongly. They kept him from interviews as much as they could –⁠ a year into his presidency, he had done just 38. By contrast, Trump had done 116, Obama 198, and Bush 71 in their first years.

By November 2022, Biden had privately told aides he intended to stand for reelection. Ron Klain, Biden’s Chief of Staff, initially questioned this, given Biden’s high disapproval ratings. But the 2022 midterms changed everything. Democrats performed better than they had in any other twenty-first century midterm, despite grim projections. Biden felt vindicated. He believed he had a special relationship with voters that politicians just didn’t understand. For the Politburo, it confirmed not only that Biden should run,⁠ but that he deserved to.

There was very little process involved in the decision. No formal meeting to discuss whether Biden was up for it, whether he could handle a taxing campaign cycle. When pollster John Anzalone spoke with Biden’s team, Anita Dunn cut him off: “We don’t need polling. The decision has been made. He’s running.” Anzalone was shocked. No assessment of his polling? No discussion of his vulnerabilities?

More devastatingly than any other event, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents exposed the president’s deterioration. 

The case began, ironically, in November 2022, when Trump was under fire for his own mishandling of classified materials. Around that same time, Biden wondered in a 60 Minutes interview “how one –⁠ anyone –⁠ could be that irresponsible.” Meanwhile, Biden’s attorneys had found similarly classified documents in Biden’s garage and other locations –⁠ materials he’d improperly stored after his vice presidency. 

By 2024, Biden’s isolation had reached new heights. Cabinet secretaries who once met with Biden regularly went months without seeing him. Instead, they briefed other senior White House aides, who would then brief Biden. In one rare direct meeting, one cabinet secretary was shocked by how, in their words, “disoriented” and “out of it” the president seemed.

Of course, they couldn’t get away with the coverup forever. Eventually, some in Biden’s inner circle began to argue that the president needed to get out in public to allay voters’ fears about his age and prove he was up to the task.

The debate was the beginning of the end. Americans could finally see they’d been lied to about Biden’s health for months –⁠ years, even. David Plouffe, who was later brought on to assist the Harris campaign, said, “One of the great lessons from 2024 [is that] never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they’re seeing is not true.”

On the inside, the period between the debate and Biden’s dropout on July 21 was marked by extreme denial. White House leaders acted like the debate hadn’t happened. Aides became even more watchful for signs of disloyalty. When conversations turned uncomfortable, Biden cut them short or referred people to Mike Donilon.