Joe Biden did not decline alone
His party and the press lost altitude along with him
Accept, for a moment, Joe Biden’s contention that he is as mentally as sharp as ever. Then try to explain some revelations of the books beginning to appear about his presidency: that he never held a formal meeting to discuss whether to run for a second term; that he never heard directly from his own pollsters about his dismal public standing, or anything else; that by 2024 most of his own cabinet secretaries had no contact with him; that, when he was in Washington, he would often eat dinner at 4.30pm and vanish into his private quarters by 5.15; that when he travelled, he often skipped briefings while keeping a morning appointment with a makeup artist to cover his wrinkles and liver spots. You might think that Mr Biden—that anyone—would welcome as a rationale that he had lost a step or two. It is a kinder explanation than the alternatives: vanity, hubris, incompetence.
In fact, by March 2023, there were times, behind the scenes, when Mr Biden seemed “completely out of it, spent, exhausted, almost gone", according to “Original Sin", by Jake Tapper, of CNN, and Alex Thompson, a reporter for Axios. In one encounter in December 2022, he did not remember the name of his national security adviser or communications director. “You know George," an aide prodded Mr Biden in June 2024, coaxing him to recognise George Clooney, who was starring at a fundraiser for him.
Mr Biden’s aides tried to compensate by walking beside him to his helicopter, to disguise his gait and catch him if he stumbled, and by using two cameras for remarks to be shown on video so they could camouflage incoherence with jump cuts. Jonathan Allen, a reporter for NBC, and Amie Parnes, a reporter for the Hill, describe in “Fight" how aides would tack down fluorescent tape to guide the president to the lectern at fund-raisers. Once the most loquacious of politicians, Mr Biden ended up clinging to brief texts on teleprompters for even casual political remarks.
Such in-plain-sight accommodations point to what is slightly ridiculous about the present exercise of exposing Mr Biden’s decline. It was obvious to many people: to donors, to some Democratic politicians on the rare occasions they met him and, most important, to Americans, who saw through his pretence long before June 2024, when he fell apart in debate with Donald Trump. In April 2023, only a third of voters told Pew Research that they thought Mr Biden was “mentally sharp".
For that reason, focusing on Mr Biden’s health is useful now less to tell a cautionary tale about his own decline, made even more melancholy by his cancer diagnosis, than one about the decline of his party and the press. “Fight" details how, after Mr Biden failed in debate, party leaders struggled to prevent the electoral catastrophe they foresaw. Even the most influential of Democrats, Barack Obama, who is portrayed as lacking confidence in both Mr Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, emerges in this account as ineffectual as he belatedly seeks some sort of “mini-primary".
The parties have become so weak that whoever becomes their nominee can dominate them. Mr Biden’s vanity, and that of his family and closest aides, overrode common sense about whether he should seek a second term. Few Democrats spoke up about his infirmity while he was in office. With few exceptions, journalists from left-leaning news organisations, quick to deplore Mr Trump’s behaviour, competed to expose Mr Biden’s frailty only once Democrats were pushing him out. Journalists from right-leaning news organisations are still pounding away at Mr Biden’s mental or ethical lapses; they show less interest in Mr Trump’s.
“We got so screwed by Biden as a party," David Plouffe, the rare Democrat in either book willing to attach his name to such criticism, told the authors of “Original Sin". Mr Plouffe helped run Ms Harris’s campaign for president after she replaced Mr Biden. Mr Plouffe describes as “one of the great lessons of 2024" something that only a condescending, insular political organisation could possibly need to learn: “never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they’re seeing is not true". (Regular readers may recall that Lexington, and The Economist, urged Mr Biden not to run again back when he was riding high, after the Democrats overperformed in the midterms of 2022.)
Many Democrats who condemn Republican congressmen for lacking the courage to oppose Mr Trump and call out his lies might instead pause to consider their own weakness, calculation or inattention. Even after that shocking debate, Democratic leaders who insisted Mr Biden was fit for a second term included not just Ms Harris but Governor Gavin Newsom of California, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, all possible presidential candidates. Have they since absorbed Mr Plouffe’s lesson?
A bridge, abridged
It’s the easy one. The party will probably not nominate an oldster again any time soon. Neither book shows that Mr Biden’s age led to policy failures by degrading his decision-making, as opposed to hiscommunication skills (as essential as breath to a president). Regardless, nominating a young candidate won’t resolve the party’s confusion. The hard questions for Democrats are not about Mr Biden’s age but about how they should face the other challenges he struggled with, including immigration, the deficit and the implementation of his own infrastructure plan.
Revisionist historians may someday emphasise Mr Biden’s legislative achievements. But those cannot compensate for his hubris. Having once declared himself a bridge to a new generation, he became, instead, just a bridge “from one Trump term to the next", the authors of “Fight" conclude. This may not be merely a story of the decline of a man, his party and the media. It may turn out to be about the decline of American democracy itself.
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