Day: August 7, 2025

Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover Up, and His Disastrous Decision to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, has received extraordinary attention in recent weeks, and for good reason. It is meticulously researched, tells an important story, and contains vignettes that will shock even the most cynical readers. It is also adroitly written. Although all readers know how the story ends, the authors created a genuine page turner. 

The book has a narrow focus, providing details about Joe Biden’s inner circle, as well as information about other top Democratic politicians and donors. It rarely expands outward to provide greater political or historical context. It nonetheless raises important questions that I hope all Americans with an interest in well-ordered politics and policymaking will ponder in the years ahead. Our increasingly dysfunctional Executive Branch suggests something has gone wrong with our constitutional order, requiring prudent reforms.

Original Sin is a rare work of political non-fiction that people across the partisan divide can enjoy, though for different reasons. Despondent progressives, looking for someone to blame for President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, can now point to some key figures who ensured that the Democratic Party would be in disarray in the months leading up to Election Day. Republican readers can relive the Schadenfreude of watching their opponents flame out. Even Biden loyalists should appreciate the sympathy the authors show the president, both for his sad decline and the heartbreaking personal losses he suffered over the previous decade, especially the death of one son and the legal and personal troubles of another. President Biden is presented as a tragic figure, not a villain.

As the book’s subtitle suggests, the Biden Administration’s “original sin” was the choice to run for a second term, despite clear signs of the president’s decline. Conservative pundits had been noting this for years, yet the president’s allies and, less forgivably, much of the mainstream media, denied that there was a problem. In a different era, other Democrats might have been more persistent in their efforts to determine whether Biden remained fit for the job, but because of their concern that another Trump presidency would end democracy in America, any criticism of the president was considered unseemly or even dangerous. Biden, after all, had defeated Trump once before. Could they be sure that another Democrat would have similar success?

Biden had previously declared that he intended to be a bridge to the Democratic Party’s future. When running in 2020, he telegraphed that he intended to defeat Trump, serve one term, and turn over the party’s reins to a younger standard-bearer. However, there was no mechanism in place to make him keep his word. His performance during his first years in office was, to most Democratic voters, acceptable. The Democratic Party’s presidential primary elections were perfunctory, at best. Insiders who witnessed Biden’s decline firsthand had few incentives to go public with their concerns. They feared being labelled as traitors, giving aid to Trump. Thus, most remained silent until Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump in June 2024 made his growing challenges undeniable.

Biden’s eventual withdrawal from the race scarcely improved the Democrats’ chances. There was no time at that point to hold a competitive primary election. Furthermore, failing to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris risked alienating key demographic groups in the party, even if she was an uninspiring candidate. Despite being nominated without much of a fight, she was in a difficult situation. She had spent months insisting the president was in perfect health. In accepting his departure and taking his place at the top of the ticket, was she acknowledging her own dishonesty about Biden’s cognitive decline? She wanted to present herself as an agent of change, but she had difficulty articulating how, if at all, her priorities would differ from Biden’s. She had little choice but to run as a quasi-incumbent, stuck with the baggage of her predecessor, with an unclear vision.

The book drives home that the problems of the modern presidency cannot be entirely blamed on Trump and his allies. Depending on one’s political allegiances, it is either vindicating or alarming that we saw many of the same pathologies during both administrations. To support their president, but perhaps more importantly to defeat his opponent, Democrats were willing to lie, to bite their tongues, to abandon principles, and ultimately act in ways that proved counterproductive to their own cause. Biden himself engaged in some of the same practices for which he and other Democrats had justifiably criticized Trump, most notably a penchant for nepotism and the baffling decision to keep classified documents unsecured in his personal residence.

The authors make a strong case that, at least when it came to foreign policy, Biden proved up to the task. Whatever one thinks about his approach to NATO and Ukraine, he was intensely focused and pursued his agenda with skill—at least for the first few years of his presidency, before his decline became more noticeable. With a limited amount of energy to spend, however, he gave less attention to many domestic affairs. The authors suggest, for instance, that Biden was largely asleep at the wheel when it came to immigration policy, letting more progressive young staffers make unpopular policy decisions that Biden himself would have likely opposed if he were paying more attention. His perceived weakness on the border proved to be a political gift to his Republican opponents.

I have previously warned conservatives that the right’s declining human capital, as measured by voting patterns among the highly educated, will create inevitable problems. It was thus interesting to learn that the Biden White House, despite having a large talent pool to draw from, was not exactly brimming with great minds. For instance, we learn that certain Biden aides did not know the difference between astronomy and astrology. The Biden Administration was also circled by its share of grifting consultants, demanding extraordinary sums far outweighing any value they might provide.

As a conservative critic of the Republican Party’s populist turn, convinced it has resulted in great mischief and damage to our political institutions, it was a strange relief to see that many of the problems I see in the contemporary GOP are also found among their opponents. This is not based on a desire to engage in “whataboutism”—the effort to deflect criticism by pointing out the other side’s failings. Rather, seeing similar issues emerge across the partisan divide indicates we suffer from systematic problems, and this knowledge will assist us as we seek to diagnose their causes and consider potential solutions.

The authors offer few suggestions about how we can avoid similar issues in the future. They suggest that presidents need to be more forthcoming about the state of their health, including their mental capacity. It would be straightforward to legally require presidents to take regular physical and mental exams, with the results provided to the public. This strikes me as reasonable, though I doubt we will see such a development during the current administration. 

I am insufficiently naïve to believe that as a nation we can reach a bipartisan consensus on many major issues at the present time. I nonetheless hope that more people across the political spectrum will conclude that the role of the presidency in American politics has changed for the worse, becoming a hindrance to functional politics. All of politics now revolves around presidential elections. Members of the president’s party in Congress now fall in line behind the president’s agenda, becoming mere auxiliaries of the White House. Members of the opposing party seek to block that agenda, and they look for any reason (justified or not) to hinder presidents with a deluge of investigations and impeachment threats. Those members who would follow their own judgment and principles, rather than toe the party line, determined by the president, are viewed as turncoats. Members no longer seem interested in safeguarding their own institution’s prerogatives, unless it is to score ephemeral partisan points.

The presidency will always remain the ultimate prize in American politics. This was the case even when the office was considerably less powerful. It should not be the only office that interests us, however. Not so long ago, conservatives argued that Congress, not the presidency, should be the most powerful and important branch of the federal government. It may be time to revisit their arguments. The late conservative scholars James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall, reasonably considered two of the conservative movement’s sharpest minds, argued persuasively that Congress was intended to be the most important branch of the federal government, and its diminishing influence represented a major problem.

Burnham argued in his 1959 book, Congress and the American Tradition, that maintaining freedom requires strong checks and balances, but also a strong legislative branch. This would keep power sufficiently diffuse and keep tyrannical impulses at bay. However, as the ideology he called “democratism” has increased in strength, it has resulted in the nation’s greater insistence that policy reflect a mythical general will. This ideology loathes intermediary institutions that can block the people’s desires. A presidential election, according to this thinking, represents a national mandate for the winner, and pushback from other branches or levels of government is viewed as a betrayal of democracy. The result is popular support for an accumulation of presidential power. Perhaps ironically, in the name of perfecting democracy, the public is clamoring for a Caesar.

For Burnham, the transition toward executive supremacy was an existential danger to liberty. It is notable that, as an uncompromising Cold Warrior, Burnham understood the importance of a strong executive, but he also recognized its dangers. Unfortunately, much of the right today seems to wholeheartedly embrace executive power as the only solution to the problems they perceive with American governance. Burnham has received renewed attention from the intellectual right in recent years, largely because of his realistic approach to political power, both at home and abroad. I hope that more of his contemporary admirers will revisit his arguments on this question.

Kendall, for his part, also believed in the importance of a strong legislative branch, and warned against allowing other branches to usurp its powers. He argued that there are always two majorities in America: the presidential majority and the congressional majority. The presidential majority, being national in its scope, is perceived to represent the popular will of the nation. It prefers fast action, it is dismissive of deliberation, and it is inclined to demagoguery. The congressional majority, in contrast, better represents the nation’s diverse interests, makes decisions after lengthy debate, and ultimately provides a more accurate reflection of the people’s will. Kendall’s thought, I should note, has also received renewed interest from conservatives, in part because, of all the major post-war conservative intellectuals, Kendall is one of the very few who could be plausibly described as a populist. Unlike other conservatives of his day, he never exhibited anti-majoritarian views. He sincerely believed in majority rule, but he argued that the legislative branch was the best institution for discerning and implementing the majority’s will.

I am not suggesting that a rebalancing of power that weakens the executive branch will prove to be a panacea to the kinds of problems presented in Original Sin. Congress, of course, has its own gerontocracy problem, especially the Senate. However, Congress will never be so completely dominated by one person, and it would not long allow a senile member to maintain one of the more important positions of leadership. We could furthermore also start demanding that members of Congress also submit to annual health exams and publish the results. If this proves insufficient to drive out incompetent members, changes to the current seniority system that benefit long-term incumbents may be worth considering. In any case, it is time for members of Congress to claw back much of the authority they have given to the presidency, which alone would lower the stakes of presidential elections. A more independent legislative branch, less fixated on helping or hurting the president, would also be less apt to reward politicians according to their talents as sycophants or thoughtless obstructionists.

Although Original Sin is focused on the Biden White House, the scandal it documented reveals broader problems with our approach to the presidency. Partisan vitriol and polarization are not going away anytime soon, but I hope good-faith observers of American politics will recognize that neither side of the divide has a monopoly on shameful behavior, and the rot is deeper than a few vain political leaders. The cult of the presidency has become a hindrance to responsible government, regardless of which party occupies the Oval Office.

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) loom large in conservative thinking about poverty and related ills. It’s widely believed that we could restore social health by reining in big government and expanding private religious programs. George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism laid out the standard expansion plan. It called for giving religious nonprofits a better shot at government contracts. That framework has also been endorsed by Donald Trump. In a February 2025 executive order, Trump stated, “The executive branch wants faith-based entities, community organizations, and houses of worship, to the fullest extent permitted by law, to compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities.” In other words, the plan is to slot FBOs into the NGO state. This merits rethinking.

America’s welfare state relies on a vast network of private nonprofit contractors to enact social policy. From one perspective, that model seems conducive to building a larger FBO sector. From another, it seems designed to tempt FBOs into overlooking how reliance on public financing makes it harder for a program to keep the faith. Temptation is a concept to which one would expect FBO champions, of all people, to appreciate. Ill-advised expansions threaten FBOs’ integrity as religious organizations offering a meaningful alternative to the social services status quo.

Setting FBOs up for success means creating programs that outperform government in boosting school performance, sobriety and employment, and/or that which promote values to which government programs are indifferent or hostile. Without a strong sense of FBOs’ distinctive virtues and the distinctive pressures they face in a secularized culture, policymakers who encourage expansion are setting faith-based leaders up for failure.

Even the most casual reader of Scripture will find his attention constantly drawn to the poorest of the poor, the miserable, the chronically ill and disabled, convicts, and others living openly sinful lives. Out of such stones cast away (Acts 4:8-12), the church will be built. Scripture shows not only Jesus’ sympathy for the wretched of the earth but his extensive personal contact with them. That example instructs that, as Pope Benedict XVI once explained to Peter Seewald, “Giving can never mean primarily giving money … you must give of yourselves.” This notion of giving of yourself is distinctive to modern faith-based organizations, which stretch thin resources through marshalling volunteer labor.

Those without any personal contact with the poor are susceptible to panaceas and utilitarian theories, such as “effective altruism,” that fetishize efficiency. Mother Teresa took constant heat from critics for failing to operate on sound business principles. Straightforward redistribution with minimal overhead will often appear as the most efficient anti-poverty policy. But redistribution will never enact the kind of behavioral change so obviously necessary to anyone who has witnessed firsthand low-income dysfunction. Giving of yourself is also less individualistic than giving of your resources. Paying taxes that go towards Medicaid, Food Stamps, etc., is part of a social contract—a deal made between the free, rights-bearing individual and the government. A redistribution-centered policy promotes a sterile, transactional conception of social work that will always seem unsatisfying to those most moved to heal society.

More than secular programs, FBOs tend to care about behavioral transformation. Aiming for behavioral transformation can yield high failure rates, but that may be defensible. Graduation from a treatment program that everyone graduates from sends a weaker message than graduation from one that most people fail out of. Conservatives sometimes argue that FBOs’ excellence consists in their ability to outperform the secular welfare state. But it may be more accurate to say that their performance can’t be compared, as they often embrace standards of success that are both different from, and higher than, secular programs’ standards.

Those concerned about anti-Christian bias often frame the FBO question as a religious liberty matter. That framing only clarifies whether religious groups can contract with government. It’s less helpful in determining whether they should. In general, an organization spiritually motivated to serve the poor may take public money to do so, as long as it doesn’t discriminate based on sect and doesn’t use taxpayer dollars to evangelize. But evangelism is precisely how FBOs reach some people failed by secular programs. Take addicts. People in recovery often fail to stick the landing because they lack something or someone to recover for. Family and friends can serve that purpose, but addicts often lack healthy social ties. Indeed, one of the standard best practices of recovery is to avoid the “people, places, and things” associated with one’s old, using ways. Building new relationships—a new life, really—takes time, leaving the typical man in recovery feeling that the only person he has to recover for is himself, which is a lonely state of affairs. But religion is always there—to provide structure, guidance, and cause for persisting in one’s sobriety. If recovery is like conversion, maybe it should be conversion.

Evangelistic work is tough sledding with poor people leading complex lives. All at the same time, they’re trying to get their kids out of foster care, obtain their high school equivalency and some form of professional certification, maintain sobriety, and secure reliable transportation and stable housing. Amidst such chaos, it’s tempting to conclude that evangelization needs to wait. On the other hand, that waiting can wind up taking forever. A crisis can present special evangelical potential. People in recovery often testify that they became sober the same day that they became a Christian and that, moreover, they’d never have made it without their faith. Reflecting on testimonies like that will naturally lead to further reflections on whether similarly situated individuals are positively harmed when social programs eschew evangelizing.

The orthodox tend to bristle when religion is pitched as a life hack for staying sober. But the argument is more dialectical than utilitarian. A recovering addict will be a better Christian if he’s sober. Further, good works have a strong evangelistic upside. In The Rise of Christianity (1996), sociologist Rodney Stark credits first-century health and human service ministries with the early church’s survival. He quotes Tertullian: “It is our care of the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another!’” Performing good works obviously holds evangelistic potential for the performers, too. Chuck Colson, Watergate con and founder of Prison Fellowship, once wrote: “The richest spiritual experiences I have known have not been in vaulted cathedrals surrounded by stained-glass windows but in the filthiest prison cells. Christians will miss the greatest blessings if they isolate themselves from the reality of the world in which God lives.”

Secularizing pressures, in the world of twenty-first-century social services, are unrelenting. One pressure point is staff. Should an organization desire to integrate Christian teaching throughout its work, success will depend on what kind of personnel they can hire in an age of diminished church attendance. In 2023, the bishop of Toronto gave an interview to The Pillar in which he lamented the impracticality of finding 40,000 teachers who are “fervently Catholic” to staff the parochial education system he oversees. Should religious charter schools get off the ground, they would in short order face a similarly impossible dilemma. The big organizations (Catholic Charities; Lutheran Services in America) are those most functionally indistinguishable from the secular welfare state. That may be due not only to compromised leadership but staffing exigencies.

Downstream of personnel concerns are those of leadership transition. Many FBOs are now led by a founder or CEO who took charge two to three decades ago and is now personally out of step with the twenty-first century’s more casually secular standards. What happens when that person dies or steps down? At bare minimum, a faith-based leader should be a churchgoer. Diminished church attendance, societywide, means that the pool of potential faith-based leaders is smaller than it was thirty years ago. In principle, leadership transition creates the opportunity for revival. And yet, in my years of experience interviewing and meeting with faith-based groups, mainly homeless service providers, I have found revival to be rare. Many new leaders come in promising continuity with their predecessors in terms of religious intensity. Many come in promising fiscal discipline, a sharper focus on “outcomes,” an expanded donor base, and enticing capital improvements. It doesn’t happen very much that a new leader comes in promising spiritual renewal and pretty much just that.

The compassionate conservative theory of FBOs was premised on pluralism, in both the social services and American religious life. Earlier in the twentieth century, it had been maintained that, without strict church-state separation, the Protestant majority would exercise unjust dominion. Religious pluralism dissipated those fears. Parallel to that, as a legacy of the Great Society’s insistence on “community action,” America adopted a highly decentralized, “nonprofit industrial complex” style approach to fighting poverty. President Bush was impressed by sociological studies directed by Catholic political scientist John Dilulio that had documented that low-income neighborhoods were dense with scrappy Christian groups doing vital work in youth mentoring, child welfare, crime prevention, and addiction. These groups were seen as being discriminated against by government funding norms, forcing them to, as Bush put it in a July 1999 campaign speech, “make bricks without straw.”

Compassionate conservatism lost support after 9/11, when Bush’s attention shifted towards foreign policy. But not everyone was sad to see it fade. Author Marvin Olasky said that “compassionate conservatism mutated into a program to help local groups apply for money in Washington and learn how to work the bureaucracy.” There is indeed an essential grubbiness associated with the scramble for government contracts that carries great reputational risks for the faith-based sector. But the deeper problem is that pushing more FBOs into a reliance on government funding will give government leverage over them. Risks associated with that leverage have intensified in the era of “pen and phone” policymaking, which President Obama developed and his successors have continued. Any faith-based leader interested in contracting with government must be able to trust that he will not thereby sacrifice his organization’s integrity. That trust can’t take root amidst fears that the next presidential administration will renege on the deal. As the old saying has it, “with government shekels come government shackles.”

The steelman case for taking public money stems from need. It seems to be the case that private resources available to an FBO don’t grow at the same rate as the need in its host community grows. Many charitable organizations are philanthropically tapped out in their community; others could raise more private resources, but only via conforming to big philanthropy’s dubious whims. What faith-based social services guru Robert Lupton calls “toxic charity” possesses no moral superiority over mediocre government programs. Staying small is a recipe for barebones service offerings, which some FBOs might be content with, but many won’t. The hardest cases’ complex needs (“comorbidity”) necessitate an equally complex array of services. A modest-sized FBO may not be in a position to hire its own master’s level social worker, psychiatrist, clinical psychologists, nurse practitioners, job training and educational specialists. If you lead a good social program (who would want to lead a bad one?), it’s natural to want to help more people, or at least do a better job helping those to whom you’re already committed.

The best approach to expansion uses partnerships with government agencies as opposed to direct funding. Partnerships can facilitate access to more specialized services. In the best kind of partnership, government effectively makes an in-kind donation to an FBO. A shelter for single men hosts onsite detox services from an outside healthcare provider. The best partnerships are settled on the faith-based provider’s terms, not the government’s. A useful model is the San Antonio-based Haven for Hope, which boasts dozens of partnerships with government and other outside service providers. The federal government could play a role by urging more states and counties to, in exchange for funding, articulate how they’re actively exploring partnering with faith-based providers.

But proceed with caution. In rightwing circles, “O’Sullivan’s Law” stipulates that institutions that are not identifiably conservative become liberal over time. Consult, for example, the sad history of Catholic colleges (at least one of which currently offers a certificate in “Cannabis Studies”). Sullivan’s law most certainly applies to faith-based social service providers. Government funding can easily catalyze organizational drift from offering a distinct choice against the secular welfare state into serving as an echo of it.