ORIGINAL SIN: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

《原罪——拜登总统的衰退，掩盖，以及他再次参选的灾难性选择》(Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again)，杰克·塔珀和亚历克斯·汤普森著

In Christian theology, original sin begins with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. But Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s “Original Sin” chronicles a different fall from grace. The cover image is a black-and-white portrait of Joe Biden with a pair of hands clamped over his eyes. The biblical story is about the danger of innocent curiosity; the story in this new book is about the danger of willful ignorance.

在基督教神学中，原罪始于亚当和夏娃吃了智慧树上的禁果。但杰克·塔珀和亚历克斯·汤普森的《原罪》讲述了一个不同的堕落故事。封面是一张乔·拜登双手捂眼的黑白照片。《圣经》故事讲的是天真好奇的危险；这本新书的故事是关于故意无知的危险。

“The original sin of Election 2024 was Biden’s decision to run for re-election — followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment,” Tapper and Thompson write. On the evening of June 27, 2024, Democratic voters watched the first presidential debate in amazement and horror: A red-faced Donald Trump let loose a barrage of audacious whoppers while Biden, slack-jawed and pale, struggled to string together intelligible rebuttals.

“2024年大选的原罪是拜登决定竞选连任——随后又极力掩盖自己认知能力的下降，”塔珀和汤普森写道。2024年6月27日晚，民主党选民惊讶而恐惧地观看了第一场总统辩论：满面红光的特朗普大放厥词，而拜登目瞪口呆，脸色苍白，勉力拼凑出能听得懂的反驳。

Trump’s debate performance was of a piece with his rallies, a jumble of nonsensical digressions and wild claims. But for many Americans, the extent of Biden’s frailty came as a shock. Most of the president’s appearances had, by then, become tightly controlled affairs. For at least a year and a half, Biden’s aides had been scrambling to accommodate an octogenarian president who was becoming increasingly exhausted and confused. According to “Original Sin,” which makes pointed use of the word “cover-up” in the subtitle, alarmed donors and pols who sought the lowdown on Biden’s cognitive state were kept in the dark. Others had daily evidence of Biden’s decline but didn’t want to believe it.

特朗普在辩论上的表现和他在竞选集会上是一致的，混杂着荒谬的离题和狂妄的主张。但对许多美国人来说，拜登的衰弱程度令人震惊。到那个时候，总统的大部分露面都已成为受到严格控制的事情。至少在一年半的时间里，拜登的助手们一直在努力照应一个越来越疲惫、越来越困惑的耄耋总统。《原罪》在副标题中尖锐地使用了“掩盖”一词，根据这本书的说法，那些惊慌失措、想要了解拜登认知状态真相的捐款人和民意调查机构被蒙在鼓里。还有一些人每天都能看到拜登衰落的证据，但不愿相信。

Tapper is an anchor for CNN (and also served as a moderator for the presidential debate); Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios. In an authors’ note, they explain that they interviewed approximately 200 people, including high-level insiders, “some of whom may never acknowledge speaking to us but all of whom know the truth within these pages.”

塔珀是CNN的主播（也曾担任总统辩论的主持人）；汤普森是Axios的国家政治记者。在作者声明中，他们解释说，他们采访了大约200人，包括高层内部人士，“其中一些人可能永远不会承认曾与我们交谈，但他们都知道书中所说的真相。”

The result is a damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, aging president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term. The authors trace the deluge of trouble that flowed from Biden’s original sin: the sidelining of Vice President Kamala Harris; the attacks on journalists (like Thompson) who deigned to report on worries about Biden’s apparent fatigue and mental state; an American public lacking clear communication from the president and left to twist in the wind. “It was an abomination,” one source told the authors. “He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.”

这本书一步步地描述了与这位年迈固执的总统关系最密切的人如何使他下定不切实际的决心，进行连任竞选。两位作者追溯了拜登的原罪带来的大量麻烦：副总统贺锦丽(Kamala Harris)被边缘化；如汤普森这样因担心拜登明显的疲劳和精神状态，因而竟敢进行报道的记者遭到攻击；美国公众缺乏来自总统的明确沟通，只能听天由命。“这是一件令人憎恶的事，”一位消息人士告诉作者。“他偷走了民主党的选举；他从美国人民手里偷走了选举。”

This blistering charge is attributed to “a prominent Democratic strategist” who also “publicly defended Biden.” In “Original Sin,” the reasons given for saying nice things in public about the president are legion. Some Democrats, especially those who didn’t see the president that often, relied on his surrogates for reassurance about his condition (“He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine”); others were wary of giving ammunition to the Trump campaign, warning that he was an existential threat to the country. Tapper and Thompson are scornful of such rationales: “For those who tried to justify the behavior described here because of the threat of a second Trump term, those fears should have shocked them into reality, not away from it.”

这一尖锐的指控来自“一位知名民主党战略家”，但他也曾“公开为拜登辩护”。在《原罪》中，在公开场合说总统好话的理由有很多。一些民主党人，尤其是那些不经常见到总统的人，依靠总统的代理人来得知他的情况（“他很好，他很好，他很好”）；还有人担心会给特朗普的竞选活动提供弹药，他们警告说，特朗普是关乎国家存亡的威胁。塔珀和汤普森对这样的理由不以为然：“对于那些试图以特朗普连任的威胁为理由，试图为本书描述的行为辩护的人来说，这些恐惧本应该让他们震惊，从而面对现实，而不是因此就远离现实。”

Biden announced that he would be running for re-election in April 2023; he had turned 80 the previous November and was already the oldest president in history. Over his long life, he had been through a lot: the death of his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972; two aneurysm surgeries in 1988; the death of his son Beau in 2015; the seemingly endless trouble kicked up by his son Hunter, a recovering addict whose legal troubles included being under investigation by the Justice Department.

2023年4月，拜登宣布他将竞选连任；去年11月，他已满80岁，成为历史上年龄最大的总统。在漫长的一生中，他经历了很多：1972年，他的妻子和女儿在一场车祸中丧生；1988年，他做了两次动脉瘤手术；2015年，他的儿子博去世；他的另一个儿子亨特似乎惹上了无穷无尽的麻烦——他是一名戒毒者，法律上的麻烦包括正在接受司法部的调查。

Yet Biden always bounced back. The fact that he defied the naysayers and beat the odds to win the 2020 election was, for him and his close circle of family and advisers, a sign that he was special — and persistently underestimated. They maintained “a near-religious faith in Biden’s ability to rise again,” the authors write. “And as with any theology, skepticism was forbidden.”

然而，拜登总是能东山再起。他不顾人们的反对，克服困难赢得2020年大选，对他和他亲密的家人及顾问圈子来说，这表明他很特别——而且一直被低估。他们“对拜登再次崛起的能力抱有近乎宗教般的信念”，两位作者写道。“和任何神学一样，怀疑态度是被禁止的。”

In 2019, when Biden announced a presidential run, he was 76. It was still a time when “Good Biden was far more present than Old Biden.” By 2023, the authors suggest, that ratio had reversed. Some of his decline was hard to distinguish from what they call “the Bidenness,” which included his longtime reputation for gaffes, meandering stories and a habit of forgetting staffers’ names.

2019年宣布竞选总统时，拜登已经76岁。在那时候，“以良好面目出现的拜登，要远多于以老迈面目出现的拜登。”两位作者认为，到2023年，情况发生了逆转。拜登的衰退在一定程度上很难与他们所说的“拜登特色”区分开来，其中包括他长期以来的失言、瞎编故事和忘记员工名字的习惯。

But people who didn’t see Biden on a daily basis were increasingly taken aback when they finally laid eyes on him. They would remark on how his once booming voice had become a whisper, how his confident stride had become a shuffle. An aghast congressman recalls being reminded of his father, who had Alzheimer’s; another thought of his father, too, who died of Parkinson’s.

但是，那些并非每天都能见到拜登的人在终于见到他时，却会越来越吃惊。他们会说他那曾经洪亮的声音如何变成了耳语，他那自信的步伐如何变得蹒跚。一位震惊的国会议员回忆说，拜登让他想起了罹患阿兹海默症的父亲；另一位议员也说，拜登让他想起自己死于帕金森症的父亲。

The people closest to Biden landed on some techniques to handle (or disguise) what was happening: restricting urgent business to the hours between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; instructing his writers to keep his speeches brief so that he didn’t have to spend too much time on his feet; having him use the short stairs to Air Force One. When making videos, his aides sometimes filmed “in slow motion to blur the reality of how slowly he actually walked.” By late 2023, his staff was pushing as much of his schedule as they could to midday.

与拜登关系最密切的人想出了一些手法来处理（或掩饰）正在发生的事情：将紧急事务限制在上午10点至下午4点之间；指示拜登的撰稿人让演讲保持简短，这样他就不用花太多时间站着；让他用短舷梯上空军一号；在制作视频时，他的助手有时会“用慢动作拍摄，以模糊他实际走路有多慢的现实”。到2023年底，他的工作人员会尽可能把日程安排在中午左右。

When White House aides weren’t practicing fastidious stage management, they seemed to be sticking their heads in the sand. According to a forthcoming book by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, Biden’s aides decided against his taking a cognitive test in early 2024. Tapper and Thompson quote a physician who served as a consultant to the White House Medical Unit for the last four administrations and expressed his dismay at the idea of withholding such information: “If there’s no diagnosis, there’s nothing to disclose.”

在严格的舞台管理之外的时间里，白宫助手们似乎总是把头埋在沙子里。根据乔什·道西、泰勒·佩格和艾萨克·阿恩斯多夫即将出版的一本书，拜登的助手们决定不让他在2024年初参加认知测试。塔珀和汤普森引用了一位在过去四届政府中担任白宫医疗部门顾问的医生的话，他对隐瞒这些信息的想法感到失望：“没有诊断，也就不需要披露了。”

Just how much of this rigmarole was desperate rationalization versus deliberate scheming is never entirely clear. Tapper and Thompson identify two main groups that closed ranks around Biden: his family and a group of close aides known internally as “the Politburo” that included his longtime strategist Mike Donilon and his counselor Steve Ricchetti. The family encouraged Biden’s view of himself as a historic figure. The Politburo was too politically hard-nosed for that. Instead, its members pointed to Biden’s record in office and the competent people around him. The napping, the whispering, the shuffling — all that stuff had merely to do with the “performative” parts of the job.

这种迂回曲折的做法到底有多少是绝望的自我行为合理化，有多少是深思熟虑的诡计，至今仍难以完全厘清。塔珀和汤普森指出，团结在拜登身边的主要有两个群体：他的家人，以及一群在内部被称为“政治局”的亲信，其中包括他的长期策略师迈克·多尼伦和顾问史蒂夫·里凯蒂。拜登的家人鼓励拜登将自己视为一个历史性人物。而“政治局”则只讲政治上的精明算计。其成员强调拜登的执政记录和他身边有能力的人。至于那些打盹、耳语、步履蹒跚——他们都简单地归于总统工作中的“表演”部分。

Tapper and Thompson vehemently disagree. They offer a gracious portrait of Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified materials and in his February 2024 report famously described the president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden and his team were incensed and tried “to slime Hur as an unprofessional right-wing hack,” but the authors defend his notorious line. They emphasize that it is incumbent upon a special counsel to spell out how the subject of an investigation would probably appear to a jury — and that what Hur wrote about Biden was true.

塔珀和汤普森对此强烈反对。他们对调查拜登处理机密材料的特别顾问罗伯特·赫尔做了一番正面的描述，赫尔在自己2024年2月的报告中，将总统描述为一位“富有同情心、善意、记忆力差的老人”。拜登和他的团队被激怒了，并试图“诬蔑赫尔是一个不专业的右派打手”，但两位作者为这句著名的话辩护。他们强调，特别检察官有责任阐明调查对象如果出现在陪审团面前，可能是什么样的形象，而且赫尔所写的关于拜登的内容是真实的。

Of course, in an election like 2024, when the differences between the candidates are so stark and the stakes are so high, nearly every scrap of information gets viewed through the lens of “Will it help my team win?” Even competently administered policy could not compensate for a woeful inability to communicate with the American people. In a democracy, this is a tragedy — especially if you believe, as Biden did, that a second Trump term would put the very existence of that democracy in peril.

当然，在像2024年这样的选举中，候选人之间的差异如此明显，利害关系如此重大，几乎每一个信息都会被从“是否有助于我的团队获胜？”的视角来看待。即使政策管理得当，也无法弥补难以同美国人民沟通的可悲无能。在一个民主国家，这是一场悲剧——尤其是如果你像拜登一样相信，特朗普的第二个任期将危及这个民主国家的生存。

Earlier this month, in what looks like an attempt to get ahead of the book’s publication, Biden went on “The View” to say that he accepts some responsibility for Trump’s victory: “I was in charge.” But he was dismissive about reports of any cognitive decline. In “Original Sin,” Tapper and Thompson describe him waking up the morning after the 2024 election thinking that if only he had stayed in the race, he would have won. “That’s what the polls suggested, he would say again and again,” the authors write. There was just one problem with his reasoning: “His pollsters told us that no such polls existed.”

本月早些时候，似乎是为了赶在这本书出版之前表态，拜登在《观点》(The View)节目上表示，他对特朗普的胜利负有一定责任。“我是负责人。”但他对任何有关他认知能力下降的报道不屑一顾。在《原罪》中，塔珀和汤普森描述了他在2024年大选后的早晨醒来时的想法：如果他继续竞选，他是会赢的。“这是民意调查显示的，他会一遍又一遍地这样说，”作者写道。他的这个说法只有一个问题：“他的民意调查专家告诉我们，根本不存在这样的民意调查。”

ORIGINAL SIN: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again | By Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson | Penguin Press | 332 pp. | $32

 《原罪——拜登总统的衰退，掩盖，以及他再次参选的灾难性选择》| 杰克·塔珀和亚历克斯·汤普森著 | 企鹅出版社 | 332页 | 32美元