Two of my favorite films are the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair and the later remake.  The first version was released in 1968.  It starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.  The remake was released in 1999 and starred Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.  The first version won an Academy Award for Best Song, was nominated for Musical Score, and has been cited for then-cutting-edge cinematography.  The second references the first in some similar scenes and the same music.  Dunaway also appears in the second in a very different role.

Each film is about a caper.  The first film involves a robbery of a Boston bank.  The second involves the  theft of a Monet oil painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.  In each film, Thomas Crown is a very wealthy man who orchestrates the thefts not out of need, but rather as an intellectual exercise.  He seeks to plan and execute the perfect crime.  In each film, the female lead is an insurance investigator seeking to retrieve the stolen assets.  She is to be paid a percentage of the recovered value as compensation.  In each case, she identifies Crown as a likely suspect but also develops a romantic affair with him.  For the rest of the film, there is the conflict between her professional responsibility and economic interest to solve the crime and the fact that doing so would lead to the arrest and imprisonment (and thus loss) of her lover.

A key difference between the first and the second films is that in the second film, there are two simultaneous theft schemes planned by Crown.  He executes the second personally; the first, done by others, fails.  In reviewing the theft, Russo points out to the police that it would be impossible for the first scheme to be successful from the perspective of simple logistics.  It was designed to fail and provide a diversion for the second to be successful.

Each version was recently shown on my cable system, and I watched them.  I have seen each a number of times.  What struck me seeing the second version was a perceived similarity to the Biden presidential debate with Trump.  Biden was doomed to fail.  That was the point.

The Biden debate exposed him as someone who has been almost universally judged incapable of running a successful 2024 campaign, let alone serving a second term ending in 2029.  A legitimate question is whether he is presently capable of finishing his first term.  It has been reported that in order to make him step down as a candidate in favor of Vice President Harris, he was threatened with use of the 25th Amendment, which would force his exit from office.  He did not go willingly.

The situation is a curious one.  Remember, it was Biden who demanded to hold the first debate.  Also, the date was the earliest ever in a presidential campaign.  All of the terms were his, with the exception of Trump’s insistence that they stand at podiums.  But why do it this way, and before the Democratic National Convention, which would have assured his candidacy?  He ran essentially unopposed  in the primaries and had gained almost all of the delegates.  He had the nomination locked up.  He would certainly have had the opportunity to debate Trump multiple times after the convention.  So why do what he did?

It is true that Biden was behind in the polls.  But Election Day was months away, and lots can happen to radically change the dynamics of an election.  There was plenty of time to change the perceived outcome.

You will recall that for months, any time Biden’s fitness for office was questioned, it was dismissed as ridiculous to suggest that he was anything but a dynamic and capable leader.  He was hidden from the press for the most part, and White House staff promoted his vigor, which was somewhat belied by video of his limited and orchestrated appearances.  Biden’s debate appearance removed all doubts of his ability to continue.

Senior White House staff and Democrat leadership dealt with him on a regular, and almost daily, basis.  They had to know his health status, both physical and cognitive.  Despite that, they did not fight the idea of the very early debate.  They continued to assure everyone that he was fine.

I believe that they knew what would happen and were prepared for it for months, if not years.  The plan was that he would fail, and fail badly.  Just as in The Thomas Crown Affair, the failure set up the desired outcome.  In this case, it was the Harris candidacy.

Chuck Todd of NBC has said that a Cabinet official told him in 2022 that there were serious questions about Biden’s health.  Senior politicos who told us in May that Biden was vigorous pushed him out in July.  Potential Democrat contenders seeking the 2024 nomination were discouraged from entering primaries because Biden was running.  If allowed, they could have been formidable opponents to Harris, but they were not allowed.  The timing and circumstances made Harris the only real alternative, and it was engineered that way by the big donors and senior party leaders.

Whether Harris succeeds in November remains to be seen.  What can be said is that her achievement of the nomination without ever having received a single vote in the primaries is unprecedented in modern political history.  To accept that it is accidental stretches the ability to believe.  It certainly suggests that the leadership of the Democrat party believes that a proclaimed shift to the left is warranted and would permit Barack Obama’s desired transformation of America to continue.

Perhaps some of the senior Democrat leadership are, like me, fans of The Thomas Crown Affair, or at least saw the film and learned from it.

Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 US.