Power is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac: Prostate Cancer is Not!

There is a fable that when Kissinger and Nixon met with Mao Zedong, Mao wondered out loud why the physically unattractive Kissinger was so successful with women. Kissinger quipped, supposedly, that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Anyone who has spent time in political campaigns, political office, or corporate hierarchies, knows there is more than a little truth to Kissinger’s claim. If you hold power or have access to it you are attractive, or at least more attractive than you would be without it. You can feel it and you can use it, and you may do foolish things for fear of losing it. The hunger for it is strong enough to suck away your courage.

Kissinger’s insight gives us, perhaps, a better understanding about how Biden got away with running again when he was so obviously impaired.

That discussion has been reopened with the publication of Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. It is the supposedly shocking story of how Biden’s mental and physical maladies were covered up. (What’s really shocking is how Tapper is hawking his own book on his own CNN show and then also covering it as major news, just a bit like Trump selling meme coins from the White House. Yes, on behalf of all authors, I’m jealous!)

And now the revelation that Biden has stage 4 prostate cancer is leading to further recriminations that he was hiding his declining health both from the public and from his fellow Democrats.

The basic argument is that those in the know knew that Biden was growing more and more feeble during his presidency and covered up the growing problems by keeping him out of the public eye. As a result, Biden and his team pressed for his reelection, while virtually no one in the Democratic Party resisted publicly, even as polls repeatedly showed that a majority of Democratic voters thought Biden was too old to run again.

Why didn’t the Democrats do something about this obvious train wreck in the making? Why didn’t Bernie, AOC, Elizabeth Warren and other congressional progressives call this process into question so there would be time to select a new candidate through primaries? Why didn’t Governors Pritzker and Newsom, along with other presidential hopefuls, say something, anything, to the American public?

The current crop of answers goes something like this: Biden was protected by his “Polit Bureau” of close advisors, as party leaders labeled them. Those in government who were in contact with Biden always reported that he was sharp and fit because he was only made available during his good times. In short, it was largely his advisor’s fault, including wife Jill, who failed the party and American democracy by protecting him from more scrutiny. And perhaps, more importantly, it was Biden’s foolish ego that pushed him to hold onto power until it was too late.

Much of that may be true, but it’s inadequate. Kissinger’s aphrodisiac explanation goes deeper.

The presidency is the ultimate source of power in American politics. How could anything match being the leader of the free world, the Commander in Chief of the largest military arsenal in history, and the single person who can control U.S. laws and legislation, from the bully pulpit, by executive order, or with a veto. Everyone wants to kiss your ring.

The president has that power. Power for most everyone else (except for the Supreme Court justices, when they show some spine) is largely derivative. As a result, those who have access to the president are far more powerful than those who do not. Gaining presidential access and then holding on to it is the next best aphrodisiac. (You want to kill an aphrodisiac? Talk about your prostate cancer.)

Progressives in Congress, like Sanders, AOC, and Warren, believed they had great influence over Biden and his agenda. There was the repeated bluster that Biden was the most pro-working-class president since FDR. Big ideas, like the Green New Deal, gained Biden’s support, and progressives were often in the center of the action, passing progressive legislation and regulations (even when ambushed by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema).

Had they dared to question Biden’s re-election run, it is likely, very likely, they would have lost their access in a hurry. That threat no doubt quieted their tongues. Proximity to power may even have led them to ignore Biden’s decline, to avoid seeing it, and even to choose not to think about it. The power-high can do that and more.

What about the presidential hopefuls? They are hungry for the fullest dose of the power aphrodisiac. If they challenged Biden and his incumbent advantage in 2024 and failed, they might never get another chance at that ultimate high. The Biden supporters among Democratic elites, especially, would never forgive them for stepping into the race. And if Biden beat them in the primaries, and then lost to Trump, or if they beat Biden and then lost to Trump, they would get blamed, and their lofty political ambitions would be quashed. Just calling Biden out, without challenging him in the primaries, would get them nowhere but down. Just ask Dean Phillips.

But if they sat back and let Biden win, or fail on his own, then the 2028 race would be wide open. Their choice wasn’t that hard. The safest path to power was to bide their time.

Unfortunately, that political pragmatism and surrender to the aphrodisiac might turn out to be enormously problematic for the Democrats. It’s not a given that Trump’s scorched earth policies will flip the House back to the Democrats in 2026, and the Senate map is a particularly tough one for the Dems. The Biden debacle has voters questioning why Democrats remained dead silent even as the rest of the country could see plainly that Biden was too old to govern.

That silence now leads to more questions about the timing of Biden’s cancer diagnosis. Did he release this information to turn media coverage away from the new book’s revelations? How could he not know of his ailment while he was president, given that he had the best health care support in the country, if not the world?

All this adds to the stains on the Democratic brand and further undermines the party’s credibility, which already is severely tarnished among working-class voters.

As this story festers, it might be a good time for progressives to question their lifelong strategy of rebuilding the Democratic Party into an instrument of working-class justice. Maybe, just maybe, they should concede that task is doomed to failure. Most Democratic Party officials do not want to be the defenders of the working class. Most, in fact, are content to work hand-in-hand with their wealthy donors who have gained their riches by siphoning wealth away from working people.

Instead, it might be time to have a serious discussion about what it will take to build a new working-class political formation, possibly a new party, even if it is going to take a decade and maybe longer to come to fruition.

The billionaires have two political parties. We need one of our own -- one that is not intoxicated by the enfeebling lust for power.