She served more than three years as First Lady, but after President Biden’s incredibly shaky debate performance and subsequent calls for him to resign, Jill Biden — and her potential power — are suddenly being thrust into the spotlight like never before. before.
“It appears to be a defining moment for the president, and I would say Jill Biden will be there every step of the way,” said Katherine Jellison, an expert on first ladies and professor of U.S. women’s and gender history in Ohio. University.
Biden’s role in her husband’s campaign and decision-making process came into greater focus last week after what even allies described as his “disastrous” debate against former President Trump in Atlanta.
The CNN debate showing, which showed Biden, 81, stumbling through some answers and at times staring blankly into space, set off a firestorm of new questions about his age and fitness for office. Prominent figures on both sides of the aisle and several newspaper editorial boards have called on Biden to drop out of the race rather than face Trump, his 78-year-old opponent.
But Jill Biden, a professor at Northern Virginia Community College who also sometimes serves as her husband’s chief advocate, made her support clear at an event held two days after the debate debacle.
“Joe is not just the right person for the job. He’s the only person for the job,” she said at a campaign fundraiser in New York.
She doubled down the next day in a phone interview with Vogue from Camp David, where the president’s family had reportedly gathered for a photo shoot and discussion.
“We will continue to fight,” Jill Biden said of the commander-in-chief’s political future in a cover story this week for the fashion magazine’s August issue.
President Biden, she said, “will not let these 90 minutes define the four years he has been president” and “will always do what is best for the country.”
GOP critics seized on the glossy spread — typically planned months in advance — that featured the first lady posing in a $5,000 Ralph Lauren collection dress. The New York Post parodied the Vogue article with its own cover, which featured an unflattering photo of the president and the headline “Vacant.”
Since the debate, a chorus of conservative voices has targeted Jill Biden, saying the burden of keeping the president in the race falls on her.
“I no longer blame @POTUS Biden for not stepping aside. He no longer has the mental acuity to make important judgments about himself,” said billionaire investor Bill Ackmanwrote on X.
“However, it is becoming increasingly clear that @FLOTUS Jill Biden is to blame,” Ackman said.
The first lady, he argued, “becomes irrelevant the moment her husband stops being president,” accusing Jill Biden of prioritizing “what is best for herself to the detriment of her husband’s health and the safety of the country in general.”
The Drudge Report ran an all-caps headline on its front page after the debate, declaring “Cruel Jill Clings to Power.”
But Michael LaRosa, her former press secretary, countered the first lady’s criticism: “It’s really unfair to put the burden on her. She’s his wife. She’s not a politician.”
“It’s not up to her to save the Democratic Party,” said LaRosa, who now works at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners.
“If the party is nervous about its prospects, it needs to talk to the president and his political advisers, but not his wife,” LaRosa said.
Ohio University’s Jellison said that most of the criticism against presidential wives “is still based on a lot of sexist notions about women being ‘the power behind the throne.'”
“If political opponents don’t like the situation, they can portray a first lady as a sort of Lady Macbeth character,” the author said.
“On the other hand, if people like what a first lady is doing, they can always say, ‘Oh, look, she’s standing next to her man — the dutiful spouse.’ So I think a lot of commentary about first ladies, pro and con, is based on antiquated thinking about the role of a wife,” Jellison said.
Elizabeth Alexander, the first lady’s communications director, told ITK that “there is a tension inherent in all first ladies – a tension that may be familiar to many women in their lives – you are supportive, but you can’t be so supportive that of their motives being questioned.”
“Women constantly deal with the delicate balance of speaking openly but not too loudly; do your job well, but do it quietly, otherwise you will be too ambitious or power-hungry. Society has put all first ladies, including Dr. Biden, in an impossible situation – with Twitter/X magnifying this on steroids in today’s world,” Alexander said.
Asked this week if the first lady is the only person who could convince President Biden to drop out, a Democratic lobbyist and donor told ITK: “That’s my opinion, yes. [Valerie Biden].”
“I don’t think it will go any further than that,” added the source, who asked to remain anonymous. “Someone in the next circle is out. The inner circle is completely family. The next circle of Ron Klain, Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reed, Mike Donilon, those people would be influential in organizing whatever the next step was.”
“The president has a lot of policy advisors and politicians — that’s never been her role,” Alexander, who also works as a deputy assistant to the president, said of Jill Biden.
“Deep down,” Alexander said of the first lady, “she sees being first lady as an act of service. She wants to be the best First Lady she can be, for the American people.”
Navigating the political world is not unfamiliar territory for Jill Biden, who married her husband, then a senator from Delaware, in 1977. Over the years, she has crisscrossed the country as a surrogate for her other half, supporting his agenda, campaigns and career while continuing her work as an educator.
Jill Biden noted that she sometimes takes matters — and Sharpies — into her own hands when trying to get her message across to her husband.
In her 2019 memoir, “Where the Light Enters,” she recalled how a group of Democratic Party leaders arrived on her doorstep in 2003 to try to persuade her husband to launch a bid for the White House.
“They sat in our living room and talked to Joe for hours about how he was the only one who could stand up to the president. [George W.] Bush. Meanwhile, I was sitting in the pool in my swimsuit, furious,” she wrote.
“We had already decided that we would not run, but people continued to insist on having these meetings with him. So, as party advisers were laying out their strategy for a theoretical run for president, my temper got the better of me,” Biden said. .
“I decided I needed to contribute to this conversation. As I walked through the kitchen, a marker caught my eye. I drew NO on my stomach in big letters and marched through the room in my bikini. Needless to say, they got the message,” she wrote.
Going back to Dolley Madison in the 1810s, first ladies traditionally played the role of close presidential advisors, Jellison said.
“What is unique is having a president who is so old, and his age being an important issue, and having the first lady advising a president perhaps beyond the political, but advising on health issues and concerns about historical reputation,” he said. she.
However, the position Jill Biden may find herself in is not unprecedented. Eleanor Roosevelt “should have known how sick her husband was [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] was, and apparently still advised him to proceed to the fourth campaign”, according to Jellison.
When Woodrow Wilson was in his second term and suffered a “debilitating” stroke in 1919, Jellison said, his wife Edith Wilson “worked to advise him to continue in office, not, for example, to resign and let the vice president take over.” .”
After more than four decades together, the Bidens operate as a unit in mutual defense, say those who have worked closely with them.
“First of all, she is your wife – of 47 years. She has been with him through rebuilding a family, two aneurysms, three presidential campaigns, six Senate campaigns, the loss of his son, the heartbreak and pain of family addiction, the brutal 2019 campaign, and running against Donald Trump during COVID. in 2020,” Alexander said. “To say they were in the trenches together doesn’t even begin to explain the bond between them.”
“As much as any husband and wife team make decisions together that impact their lives, they absolutely do, but as she has said more times than I can count – politics is his path. She supports his career and he supports hers,” Alexander said.
“She supports him when he makes decisions or when they make decisions together that impact her and the family,” LaRosa said. “Once they make decisions, they support each other through them.”
“They are clearly deciding to continue [in the race]and she will be a tireless supporter of his,” LaRosa said.
When President Biden was weighing whether to run for reelection in February 2023, Jill Biden — who made history as the president’s first wife to hold a full-time job outside the White House — described taking his cues and endorsing whatever path he took. he followed.
“It’s Joe’s decision,” she said in an interview with CNN. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he is, we are there. If he wants to do something else, we’ll be there too.”
That same month, President Biden was asked if he would seek another term.
“Let me ask the question everyone is asking: Are you running?” ABC News’ David Muir asked the president.
“Well, apparently someone interviewed my wife today,” he replied.
“I have to call her and find out,” he joked.
Alex Gangitano contributed.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
