Selfishness, Arrogance & Mendacity

Three words that should be chiseled over the entrance of the Biden Presidential Library

Now it can be told

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Last week, commenting on the unfolding tale of the Biden scandal, I wrote this:

If the excerpts published so far are anything to go by, Original Sin will be a bombshell account of the greatest scandal in American history: the clandestine usurpation of presidential power by a cabal of White House staffers. That’s a story that the Biden family, the Democratic Party, progressives in general, and much of the media would prefer to shove down the memory hole.

I was referring, of course, to the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, which had just dropped into my Kindle. I finished reading it last night and can attest that Original Sin is just that: a bombshell that demolishes the master narrative of the Biden cabal: good old Scranton Joe, master of empathy, policy wonk, progressive hero, savior of the nation, brimming with energy, sharp as a tack for a guy his age. The people who regard Donald Trump as an existential threat to “our democracy” must be terribly pissed at the Biden cabal just now, whose corruption and ineptitude rolled out the red carpet for Trump’s return to the White House. But I have no sympathy for them—because they were stupid enough, or cynical enough, to embrace that master narrative.

Original Sin has its defects. Tapper and Thompson haven’t much to say about the media’s role in the attempted coverup of Biden’s senile decay. And though the book includes a damning indictment of the Democratic Party establishment’s complicity in the coverup, many of the sources quoted are not identified by name. Nor is much said about the culpability of Biden’s two press secretaries, shameless liars both, Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre.

Original Sin is devastating, however, in its depiction of the Biden cabal: the family and a small group of ultra-loyalists who created the master narrative to cover up the fact that Joe Biden was unfit for the presidency even before he took office. The villain of the piece is Jill Biden—excuse me, Dr. Jill Biden as she insisted on being styled. Yes, of course, there’s no sin in the love and loyalty that she surely felt for her husband. But her makeup included selfish egotism, a taste for power, and a sense of entitlement that corrupted that love and loyalty.

Shortly after the debate with Trump that sealed Joe Biden’s fate but before he dropped out of the race, my wife and I were discussing the matter, and we agreed that what Jill Biden was doing to her husband was terrible. “If we were in that situation, I would never let you do it,” she said. “I’d sit down with you and explain why you couldn’t do it. She is so selfish.”

In his review of Tapper and Thompson’s book, National Review’s Jim Geraghty put it this way:

Original Sin reaffirms what many conservatives believed. First, the Bidens are terrible people—selfish, arrogant, lying to themselves and others, oblivious to the predictable and likely consequences of their actions, incapable of separating their personal interest from the country’s best interest. They are the pinnacle of American power and privilege but always see themselves as victims. They talk a lot about duty and honor and country, but put themselves first, every single time.

Biden’s decision to run for reelection, which was backed and encouraged by his family and the ultra-loyalist inner circle, was the ultimate demonstration of that selfishness, arrogance, and mendacity.

Fans of our current president chuckle over what they call Trump Derangement Syndrome: an irrational, hysterical fear of the Prince of the Golden Escalator. And yes, the Nazi-Shouting Never Trumpers are way over the top. But then there’s Biden Derangement Syndrome: an irrational belief in the master narrative of the Biden cabal. Joe Biden has been in public life for fifty years. And right from the beginning, he showed himself to be a blowhard, a fabulist, a know-nothing, and a fool. As former secretary of defense Robert Gates put it, Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” I savor the irony that people deranged enough to believe that Trump’s the American Hitler are also deranged enough to believe that Biden was the second coming of FDR.

Amazingly, there are still people out there who sing the praises of Joe Biden. Not long ago I came across a Substack Note claiming that he was “the greatest president of our lifetime.” And recently, this gem appeared in response to a Substack Note of mine:

Recollect that there still remains no information or diagnosis that suggests that Joe Biden has cognitive decline in excess of that normal for a man of his age, and that nothing has been “covered up” about it at all—his age was always a matter of public record

None of the people who testified that Biden was alert and lively in personal interactions with him have withdrawn those statements or suggested that they lied

Most of Jake Tapper’s book rests on known falsehoods, like saying “Biden was avoiding his cabinet” in a period he was documented to be holding cabinet meetings

It takes a hell of a lot of derangement to concoct an argument like that. I was particularly struck by the claim that since no one has admitted to lying about Biden’s incapacity, they must have been telling the truth about his energy and sharpness. Logical disconnect, anyone?

All in all, the rearguard defense of Joe Biden’s disastrous legacy has been half-hearted and feeble—a final flicker of gaslighting. When it comes down to the claim that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson just made it all up—well, that’s just pathetic.

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