“If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”–-Matthew 15:14

**When I first heard that President Biden had been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer, I took this story down out of respect for him and his family. After reading the book, I’ve rewritten much of it, and I’m sharing it again now because I believe the message still matters. Maybe now more than ever.**

Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election was not as clear-cut as it may now seem in retrospect. While he appeared healthy and sharp at times, the signs of age were already apparent and continued to emerge during public events and in private settings at the White House. In retrospect, the belief—shared by him and his allies—that he was the only Democrat capable of defeating Donald Trump seems to have outweighed broader political concerns.

In Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson offer a sobering, detailed account of a president in cognitive decline.

What I learned from the book was deeply troubling. In the end, it was Biden’s decision to make, and it was the biggest mistake of his political career at a time when the country faced its biggest threat.

The warnings were there. As early as 2022, Democratic insiders were privately voicing concern. One account described Biden repeatedly calling National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan by the wrong name. Aides shortened his walking routes to avoid public stumbles. According to the book, over 200 staffers and operatives privately questioned his fitness.

If you see the ship heading for the rocks, you don’t stay quiet out of loyalty to the captain. You say something. You act.

And many did.

Obama, Pelosi, and many others tried—and failed—to persuade him to step aside, surrender the role he could no longer fulfill—for the good of the country. They saw the signs. They knew the stakes. But like a delusional Captain Queeg, convinced he alone could save the Caine, Joe Biden saw any dissent as mutiny. He barked orders, clung to control, stubbornly insisting that he alone could steer the nation through the storm.

It was all illusion.

In Biden’s mind, he imagined he could still count on the loyalty of his party, and the people, and worse, the blind support of his family, who enabled him no matter the cost. But the support he believed in never fully materialized. His conviction that he could lead for a second term was rooted not in moral clarity or strength, but mental decline and the need to remain relevant.

Like Queeg obsessing over the missing strawberries, Biden fixated on betrayal, convinced that those around him were plotting against him. In Biden’s eyes, Obama, Pelosi, and the others were disloyal officers. Conspirators. Traitors to the cause. He saw political assassins like senators confronting Caesar in the Capitol, intent on ending his presidency.

Even as the tide was turning against him, Biden clung to the belief that he could still prevail in the only battle that mattered—an election he was no longer equipped to win.

What was needed was not defiance, but moral clarity. Not stubbornness, but sacrifice. But Joe Biden was already too far gone to recognize anything that he deemed stood against him. And Jill Biden was the XO who faithfully defended him and cast the doubters as the faithless. The more those around him tried to right the ship, the more the captain doubled down.

Each chapter reads like a train wreck in slow motion.

One troubling moment described a closed-door briefing on Ukraine. Biden repeatedly asked questions that had already been answered and referred to President Zelensky as “the guy in Poland.” Staff exchanged uneasy glances. One aide said it was like watching a man flip through a mental Rolodex and come up empty. These weren’t isolated slips—they were part of a growing pattern.

But Biden’s tragedy was not just his refusal to step aside—it was the failure of those closest to him—his family, blinded by love and loyalty, denying the obvious. Their loyalty, however well-intentioned, became a quiet betrayal of the very ideals Joe Biden once championed. Love is not blind obedience—it is the courage to tell hard truths. And ethics isn’t loyalty to a person—especially to one who consistently disrespects the values and virtues that America stands for—it’s loyalty to principle. And when principle is lost, so is the compass that guides the ship.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The election isn’t a personal contest—it’s a choice between stability and chaos, between democratic norms and authoritarian ambition. History is littered with leaders who refused to see what time and truth made clear—Wilson in his final year, Reagan’s whispered lapses, even FDR’s declining health in 1944. But never has the risk been so visible, so openly discussed, and so dangerously ignored.

In moments like these, it’s not comfort or calculation that defines leadership—it’s the willingness to step aside when the mission demands more than we can give. And sadly, those few in the strongest position to help failed.