Is it possible to stage a political cover-up over something that's obvious to everyone? Weirdly, it is, said Alex Shephard in The New Republic. If you don't believe it, just read "Original Sin", the new book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about how Joe Biden's family and colleagues conspired to hide his growing frailty and confusion during his time in the White House.
It was a vain effort in some respects, as Biden's decline was evident to anyone who saw him walk or talk. Poll after poll showed that voters were all too aware of the issue. Yet the White House succeeded in suppressing talk about it, at least until Biden's disastrous TV debate with Donald Trump. It used "tactics that can only be described as Trumpian – denying any and all accusations", and attacking the credibility of any reporter or politician who raised legitimate questions about the president's fitness.
We can't let sympathy with Biden over his recent cancer diagnosis stand in the way of a "reckoning" for this cover-up, said Megan McArdle in The Washington Post. Thanks to "Original Sin", we now know that "the most powerful nation in the world and its nuclear arsenal were left in the hands of a man who could not reliably recognise people he'd known for years, maintain his train of thought or speak in coherent sentences". By late 2023, Biden's staff were apparently pushing as much of his schedule as possible to midday, when he was at his sharpest. Even for small meetings, he often relied on a teleprompter. The hiding of Biden's decline represents a "near-treasonous dereliction of duty" by his staff. Democrats and the liberal press have a lot to answer for, too.
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Biden and his backers were lying to themselves as much as to others, said Carlos Lozada in The New York Times. They were in thrall to the "Biden mythology" of the scrappy leader beating the odds. Because of their misgivings about Kamala Harris, and their hatred of Trump, they felt justified in concealing the truth.
But Democrats now need to resist the temptation to pin the whole election debacle on Biden. If he'd dropped out of the race earlier, it's not clear that any other nominee would have done better than Harris. For too long, the Democrats have acted as the anti-Trump party, offering no positive sense of what they believe in. History won't be kind to Biden, but Democrats should be mindful that "it's easier to find a scapegoat than an identity".
