MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Joe Biden has been out of office for more than a hundred days now, and yet he's dominating the news cycle in a way he rarely did during his four years as president. This past weekend brought news that Biden has Stage 4 prostate cancer, and today marks the official pub date for "Original Sin" by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The book has people asking who knew what and when did they know it about Biden's cognitive and physical decline.
Well, among the questions we are asking, where does the flood of news about Joe Biden leave Democrats? I'm going to put that question now to longtime democratic political strategist and former adviser to President Clinton, Paul Begala, who is joining us from an airport. Paul Begala, welcome back.
PAUL BEGALA: (Laughter) Hi, Mary Louise. Thanks for having me.
KELLY: What has surprised you? What has struck you as revelation after revelation has landed from this book?
BEGALA: It's kind of two things. We both knew there was an iceberg, but we didn't know how big it was. Even before the debate, the vast majority of Americans were worried that Joe Biden was too old. And after the debate, everybody, especially Democrats, were convinced that he couldn't do it. But, you know, I myself, as an active Democrat and a big Biden supporter, somebody who loves and admires him, you know, I'm asking myself, what did I miss? They say in the book he had good days and bad, which is true. And I clung to the good days and tried to avert my eyes on the bad.
KELLY: I mean, the subtitle of this book that's making so many waves is "President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, And His Disastrous Choice To Run Again." Just to put the direct question to you, was there a cover-up?
BEGALA: That - it's not the word I would use, although I haven't finished the book. But I have worked in the White House, and there were scores of people who saw President Clinton regularly - Cabinet members, the media, the staff. It does seem from the book that President Biden was far, far more isolated. And in that sense, maybe they were hiding the president's condition. I still don't worry that he made any bad decisions or did anything that hurt the country. It looks like he conducted himself as president very well. He just wasn't up to running again.
KELLY: I mean, just to press you on the use of the word cover-up, the authors of the book were on this program yesterday, and one of them - Alex Thompson - said, look, if there wasn't a cover-up, why was everyone so surprised by that disastrous debate performance last summer?
BEGALA: Everybody was surprised except the American people. In other - I was shocked. Maybe the elites, particularly in my party, were so wanting Biden to succeed that we averted our eyes from it.
KELLY: You're talking about the elites in your party, the Democratic Party. What does this mean to your party's ability to hold President Trump, his administration and Republicans accountable for policies, for actions you disagree with? I mean, is your credibility shot - is the gist of the question?
BEGALA: Not even dinged. Not a bit. I do think that members of Biden's team misled us. Every breath that Donald Trump takes is mendacious. And just as a political strategist, we are 531 days from the midterm election. We got prices going up because of tariffs. We got the biggest cut in Medicaid in history of the country. It's inconceivable that anybody will give a rip snort about Joe Biden's health in 531 days when their own health care is being cut and their prices are going up.
KELLY: You don't see this as being damaging at all to Democrats who protected him, who will be facing voters in the midterms?
BEGALA: That's correct. I don't think any Democrat who's going to be facing voters in the midterms was at all complicit. It seemed to me from the book to be a small handful of aides and then a whole bunch of politicians who understandably were rooting for him and hoping that he was doing fine, but they didn't know. They didn't see him every day - only about half a dozen people did.
KELLY: What about for Biden personally? How damaging is this to his legacy?
BEGALA: He's a truly wonderful man, and now he's facing this health crisis, and he'll face it with courage. It's heartbreaking. None of that takes away from what he accomplished as president, which is rescuing us from COVID, restoring the economy, rebuilding manufacturing. And I think, in time, the record, it will level out. But it - look, a lot of us believe that his decision to run is how we got Mr. Trump back, so it does take it, but I hope it doesn't define it.
KELLY: Paul Begala - he was counselor to President Clinton. He is now a CNN commentator and scholar at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Paul Begala, thanks.
BEGALA: Mary Louise, thank you.
KELLY: And this note - in a statement to NPR, a spokesperson for Biden said, quote, "we continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite. He was a very effective president." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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