Original Sin has one of the longest subtitles I have ever seen: "President Biden's Decline, it's Cover-Up and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again." That tells you most of what you need to know, other than the identity of the authors: two journalists Jake Tapper, Chief Washington Correspondent for CNN and Alex Thompson, a National Political Correspondent for Axios and a CNN contributor.

The book was published in late May, and it began as number one on the New York Times best seller list. Less than two months later, it is no longer to be found there at all. There is an index so those who are concerned about how they might be portrayed can quickly turn to their pages and not be bothered to read the rest. Washington protocol requires this to happen before any rivals text to ask how you reacted to your portrayal. There are many key figures whose names do not appear at all because the authors were generous with their offers of anonymity. Without that, there would have been no book at all. That also tells you a good deal about how Washington works.

I am pretty confident, the authors believe that the "original sin" was Joe Biden's for reneging on his commitment, before the 2020 election, to be a one term president, given that he would have been 86 at the end of his second term. It is possible they would also lay the "original sin" at the feet of a small group of his closest advisors and family who realized their days in the sun and in power would come to an end when Biden's tenure ended. Unsurprisingly, they did not love the one-term idea.

There were several dates when Joe Biden's presidency ended: the debate with Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, when the national television audience realized the full extent of the president's incapacity; the assassination attempt in Butler Pennsylvania, when Donald Trump stood up with blood streaming down his face and shouted “fight, fight, fight;" the long weeks it took the Democratic leadership to work their way through Biden’s self-interested politburo (authors’ words not mine); and perhaps even the day Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democratic candidate. No need to choose. Each one alone was sufficient and together they more than sealed the deal.

I read the book at one sitting (or rather one flying) on a plane from Washington to San Francisco, and I did not always agree that the "original sin" lay at the top. There were many others -- whole professions even – that seemed systemically even more important. There is no need to be partisan as it never once crossed my mind that the Republicans would have done anything different had the roles been reversed. The press might have acted differently, but neither party would have.

I don't recall a moment in the book when any of the sources, either named or anonymous, had the slightest concern that the leader of the free world might have been incapable of doing the job. They were only concerned that he might be incapable of getting the job, or worse, damaging their own chances of getting reelected in the midst of a presidential bloodbath.

From time to time there are uplifting discussions of placing country ahead of party, but there was not the slightest suggestion of that in this book. Are those in a position to do so also original sinners?

Then you get to the authors, either in their own capacity or as representatives of the press generally. According to their sources and the quotes they themselves chose, the authors knew well before the debate that Joe Biden was a candidate for retirement, whether voluntary or otherwise, rather than for the presidency. Jake Tapper was a moderator of the disastrous June 27 debate, and he was even exchanging notes to that effect with his cohost. If we don't expect the press to share that kind of information with their viewers, listeners and readers what do we expect them to do?

Could they not also be “original sinners?”