How Many People Knew? Turns Out, A Lot
More on the Biden story, plus Greece and Rome
This will be fairly short for the holiday weekend. I’m staying with one of the week’s two big stories, the press explosion of concern over Biden’s condition after years of lockstep denial.
The week’s other big story — what’s going on in the Court and how that relates to the Project 2025 plan — that we’ll reserve for more thoughtful coverage. We touched on it briefly here, but the topic is massive.
Hint: I’m going to veer away from most people’s analysis; I’ll be much more specific. This country is not a republic at the moment. But what are we?
Coupling Project 2025 with decisions from Dobbs through Trump gives a strikingly clear picture of where we’re headed, even absent a change of Occupant.
After literally years of close study, I think I finally see how all the Right Wing pieces fit together. It’s different, though just as bad, as what you’ve been hearing. And we’ve been on this path for longer than most of you have been alive.
But that’s for later. Stay tuned.
Links
These links are all of a piece. They add to this earlier piece.
• Carl Bernstein: Sources say concerns about Biden have been growing for a year (CNN)
This matters since it speaks to the White House cover-up. He doesn’t make clear who knew and who didn’t, exactly, but awareness of Biden’s diminished condition went beyond a knowledgeable few.
Well, these are people, several of them, who are very close to President Biden, who love him, have supported and been among ... among them are some people who have raised a lot of money for him.
And they are adamant that what we saw the other night, the Joe Biden we saw, is not a one off, that there have been 15, 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed.
And what's so significant is the people that this is coming from, and also how many people around the president, are aware of such incidents, including some reporters, incidentally, who who have witnessed some of them.
But here we see tonight [when the president gave prepared remarks], as these people say, President Biden at his absolute best.
And yet these people who have supported him, loved him, campaigned for him, see him often, say that in the last six months particularly there has been a marked incidence of cognitive decline and physical infirmity.
There’s more to the interview than this. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it already. Note “including some reporters.” This confirms lies.
File under “Gods, what a mess.”
• ‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate (Politico)
For those who wonder who’s acting as gate-keepers — colloquially, “who’s running the show” — when Biden is indisposed, this Politico piece names several key names. It walks on eggshells to get there, but do read it through.
Over the course of his presidency, Joe Biden’s small clutch of advisers have built an increasingly protective circle around him, limiting his exposure to the media and outside advice — an effort to manage public perceptions of the oldest person to ever hold the office and tightly control his political operation.
But inside the White House, Biden’s growing limitations were becoming apparent long before his meltdown in last week’s debate, with the senior team’s management of the president growing more strictly controlled as his term has gone on. During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings they’ll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him.”
That’s the opening. Notice the switch in the second paragraph, from the focus on the “senior team’s management of the president” to, inexplicable, the president’s temper: “people are scared shitless of him.”
Clearly, Politico wanted to drop this second idea into the opening paragraphs, and do it without saying why. They’re not the first, by the way, to comment on Biden’s temper.
As to who might be running interference and, perhaps, acting as occasional Biden regents, Politico spreads the answer through the second half of the piece (emphasis mine):
No one has done more to keep the president isolated — and shielded from tough conversations — than his wife, first lady Jill Biden, and sister, Valerie Biden Owens.
[…]
A Democratic operative in frequent communication with the White House and the campaign said suggestions can be quickly dismissed. “If I’m talking to Anita [Dunn], and I say, ‘what about X?’ She’s quick to say, ‘The president’s not going to do that. No chance.’ It shuts off options, yes, but it also [lets] you move more quickly because they know him so well.”
[…]
From the earliest months of his term, Biden was carefully managed by senior adviser to the first lady Anthony Bernal, deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, [Ron] Klain and others. After a campaign spent largely inside his Delaware home, the president remained in a protective bubble at the behest of senior staff and family, who believed it was the best way to manage the president’s health given the ongoing Covid-19 risk and his reelection chances, according to five people familiar but not authorized to publicly discuss internal decisions.
Bernal and Tomasini, in particular, have grown particularly close to the president and first lady. […]
In my research, the names that come up the most as the curating crew are Jill Biden, Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. But as Politico and Bernstein point out, a great many others knew what was going on.
File under “The public should also be told. Right? Right?”
The Fall of Athens and Rome
Two points before we conclude:
• When the Roman Republic fell, it wasn’t a one-day job. It took place over time, several generations, starting with the Gracchi reforms and murders in the late second century BC, through Marius, Sulla and Caesar. Over time, the institutions themselves were changed, both by the people and leaders in deadly contention.
We’ve walked more than half of that path already ourselves. We were a republic. We’re now in transition from that. Bush v Gore is not the original Original Sin, but it’s one of them, and that has been embraced. Bush, you recall, was the author of our modern Surveillance State, which was never rolled back.
We’re not a republic, though many are denying that fact. What are we today? Stay tuned.
Those who have access to the Great Courses “History of Ancient Rome” by the excellent Garrett Fagan should listen to the story of the transformation. Start with Lesson 20. You’ll see what I mean about changing institutions with no path to return.
• The lesson the Athenian Empire learned in its (literally) ill-advised war with Sparta was simple: You can’t have an empire abroad and democracy at home. Just can’t be done. Plato despaired of democracy, having witnessed its fall, one reason he wrote the Republic.
Music
Some soothing Dave Brubeck. This piece grows from a delight tune he wrote called “Brandenburg Gate.” (YouTube can serve up a few live versions of that.)
This version is “Brandenburg Gate Revisited”, played by quartet with full orchestration. Did you know Brubeck was classically trained? He studied under Darius Milhaud. It shows in this piece.
Click the image to play, or use the link above. Enjoy.
It's an oligarchy Thomas -- just read all the comments about the "donor class" opining and getting together to choose another candidate. The US started off with the 18th century Virginia landed oligarchy and is ending with the billioinaire merchants.
Nominating the 22nd rent candy out of 23 in the field, someone who has been a corporate donor class water carrying fellation tool their entire political career, has consequences…..