In the weeks since Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s “Original Sin” came out, there has been so much speculation about Joe Biden’s cognitive health that feels so pointlessly retrospective to me, or conveniently certain — even though I wouldn’t say I disagree fundamentally with what seems to have emerged as the consensus view.

Writing in POLITICO, James Kirchick took the Beltway reporters to task for what he argued was their (our) failure to investigate and cover the “truth” about the president’s mental acuity, as if the truth were a simple binary (is he okay?) and as if the answer was as evident at the time as it now appears with the benefit of hindsight.

“Lack of access is no excuse,” he wrote. I happen to disagree: Not only is that an excuse but it’s also a perfectly serviceable explanat

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