Joe Biden’s Original Sin

I just finished Original Sin, the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that traces how President Biden’s decision to run for a second term—despite mounting evidence to the contrary—slowly unraveled into a crisis. It’s not a thriller, exactly. More of a slow-motion reckoning.

I picked it up because I’ve been struggling with the same question so many of us have: How did we end up here? How did the sitting president wait so long to bow out that we never really had an election? How did the party’s bench stay empty until the eleventh hour? And why, in a system designed to manage risk, did no one seem willing to name it?

The book doesn’t offer an easy villain. That’s probably what makes it feel honest.

The Cost of Hanging On

The central mistake, laid out with mounting evidence, is this: Biden should have stepped aside much earlier. His aides knew he wasn’t in good shape. Not in some vague, partisan sense, but in the specific, medical, visible-every-day sense. And yet, no one pushed for a real primary. No one opened the door for an exit. Instead, they closed ranks, hedged, delayed. And hoped.

There’s a line in the book—from Archibald Cox, of all people—that stuck with me:

“We should be reminded of the corrupt influence of great power, especially when the power is in the hands of someone who is willing to resort to any tactics, however wrong, to retain and increase his power… a large circle of men and women whose personal status and satisfaction depends [on him].”

It’s not that Biden was hatching some Machiavellian scheme. It’s that power warps perspective, especially when you’re surrounded by people who depend on it too.

The Politburo

The book refers to Biden’s tight inner circle—his longtime advisers and family—as the Politburo. It’s not a flattering nickname. And yet it captures something essential about how they functioned.

Mike Donilon, Biden’s chief strategist, and Steve Ricchetti, his counselor and a former lobbyist, were two of his most influential and loyal advisers. Their careers were deeply tied to Biden’s success, and they weren’t inclined to question his direction—even as warning signs grew. As one congressman put it, “They’re living the first line of their obituary. Nobody gives that up.”

In that light, the decisions they made—what to share, what to hide, what to hope for—begin to make a kind of tragic sense. They weren’t just protecting Biden. They were protecting themselves.

The Hunter Problem

And then, there’s Hunter.

This part is hard. Biden is a father who’s already lost two children. The grief is enormous. The instinct to protect what remains—understandable. But grief doesn’t always make room for good judgment.

The book doesn’t ask us to speculate about conspiracy theories. It just lays out the facts, many of them drawn from court evidence. Hunter Biden filmed himself using drugs. He had an affair with his late brother Beau’s widow. He later got her addicted to crack cocaine. These aren’t partisan attacks—they’re documented realities.

Rather than being kept at a distance from the campaign, Hunter was a close and active presence. He weighed in on strategy. He advised his father. And when the legal issues escalated, Biden didn’t create distance—he closed ranks.

In the official pardon statement, Biden wrote:

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son, and that is wrong.”

It’s an emotional defense. You can hear the father in it. But the president? He’s harder to find.

Hunter wasn’t selectively prosecuted. He broke the law—repeatedly, and flagrantly. A quiet pardon might have been a mercy. Making a declaration of innocence, on the other hand, risks turning this into a political right. Tapper makes the case that this gave Trump license to grant a wholesale pardon to the January 6th rioters.

What We’re Left With

This isn’t just a story about Joe Biden. It’s a story about how power works—how it insulates, how it rewards loyalty over honesty, and how the people closest to a leader can sometimes become least able to tell them the truth.

There’s no grand betrayal here. Just a slow erosion of perspective. The kinds of compromises that don’t feel like compromises until it’s too late.

And that’s maybe the saddest part of Original Sin. It doesn’t end with a twist or a villain’s comeuppance. It ends with a quiet realization: the guardrails we trust to protect our democracy are only as strong as the people steering the car. And sometimes, they’re not looking out the windshield at all.