As president teeters, Jill Biden faces a critical juncture

July 2, 2024

Though she’s been first lady for more than three years, her shockingly shaky performance during Biden’s presidential debate and subsequent calls for her resignation have suddenly thrust Jill Biden and her potential power into the spotlight like never before.

“It seems like a make-or-break moment for the president, and Jill Biden is always going to be there,” said Katherine Jellison, an expert on first ladies and professor of U.S. women’s and gender history at Ohio University.

Biden’s husband’s role in the campaign and decision-making process became even clearer last week after what even her allies described as a “disastrous” debate with former President Trump in Atlanta.

The 81-year-old Biden stumbled and slurred during the CNN debate, raising a new storm of questions about his age and fitness to be president, with prominent figures in both parties and several newspaper editorial writers urging him to drop out of the race rather than face off against Trump, 78.

But Jill Biden, a professor at Northern Virginia Community College and sometime defender of her husband, offered her support at an event two days after the debate disaster.

“Joe is not just the right person for this job, he is the only person right for the job,” she said at a campaign fundraiser in New York.

She doubled down on her claim the next day in a phone interview with Vogue from Camp David, where the president’s family was reportedly gathering for a photoshoot and discussion.

“We’re going to keep fighting,” Biden said this week in a cover story for the magazine’s August issue about the commander in chief’s political future.

She said Joe Biden “is not going to let these 90 minutes define his four years as president” and that he “will always do what’s best for the country.”

Republican critics pounced on the glossy feature (usually planned months in advance) in which the first lady posed in a $5,000 Ralph Lauren Collection dress. The New York Post parodied the Vogue article, creating its own cover with an unflattering photo of the president and the headline “Fuzzy.”

Since the debate, a wave of conservative voices has targeted Jill Biden, arguing that she carries the burden of keeping the president on the campaign trail.

“I no longer blame President Biden for not stepping down. He no longer has the mental capacity to make any significant decisions about himself,” billionaire investor Bill Ackman said. I wrote to X.

“But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the blame lies with @FLOTUS Jill Biden,” Ackman said.

She argued that the first lady “becomes irrelevant the moment her husband is no longer president” and accused Biden of prioritizing “what’s best for himself over the health of my husband and the safety and security of the entire country.”

The Drudge Report ran a front-page headline in capital letters after the debate declaring, “Cruel Jill Clings to Power.”

But former presidential spokesman Michael LaRosa responded to the first lady’s criticism, saying, “It’s really unfair to put that burden on her. She’s the spouse of the president, she’s not a politician.”

“It’s not up to her to save the Democratic Party,” said LaRosa, now with the lobbying firm Ballard Partners.

“If the party is worried about its future, it needs to talk to the president and his political advisers, but not to its spouse,” LaRosa said.

Ohio University’s Jellison said much of the criticism of presidential spouses “rests on the sexist notion that women are the ‘behind the scenes wielders of power.'”

“If political opponents don’t like the situation, they can portray the first lady as a Lady Macbeth-like figure,” the author said.

“On the one hand, people who like what the first lady does can say, ‘Oh, she’s there for her husband, the faithful spouse.’ So I think a lot of the commentary, both pro and con, about first ladies is based on old ideas about the role of a female spouse,” Jellison said.

“There are always tensions with a first lady, and it’s something that may be familiar to many women in their lives, but we’re supportive, but we can’t be so supportive that our motives are questioned,” Elizabeth Alexander, a spokeswoman for the first lady, told ITK.

“Women have always had to walk that delicate balance of speaking up but not too loud, doing their job well but being quiet or being too ambitious or too power-hungry. Society has put every First Lady, including Dr. Biden, in an impossible situation, and in today’s world, Twitter/X has just amplified this,” Alexander said.

Asked this week whether the first lady was the only person who could convince Biden to step down, a Democratic lobbyist and donor told ITK: “My view is, yes. Maybe his sister would be the one.” [Valerie Biden]”

“I don’t think it will go any further than that,” the source, who asked not to be named, added, “someone in the next circle. The inner circle is absolutely family. The people in the next circle — Ron Crane, Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reid, Mike Donilon — will have influence in organizing whatever the next step is.”

“The president has a lot of political and policy advisers, but that’s not her role,” Alexander, who also serves as acting chief of staff, said of Jill Biden.

“At her heart, 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,” Alexander said of Biden.

Politics is no stranger to Biden, who married her husband, then a Delaware senator, in 1977. Over the years, she has traveled the country representing him, supporting his policies, campaigns and career while continuing her work as an educator.

Biden herself said she sometimes took things into her own hands — and the Sharpie — when trying to get her message across to her husband.

In her 2019 memoir, “Where the Light Enters,” Biden recalled a group of Democratic leaders coming to her home in 2003 to try to convince her husband to run for the White House.

“They sat in our living room and talked to Joe for hours, telling him he was the only person who could stand up to President Bush, while I sat in the pool in my swimsuit, furious,” Biden wrote.

“We had already decided not to run, but people kept insisting on meeting with him, so while party advisers were formulating a theoretical strategy for a presidential run, I lost patience,” Biden said.

“I decided I needed to contribute to this conversation. I was walking through my kitchen when a Sharpie caught my eye. I wrote ‘NO’ in big letters on my stomach and walked around the room in my bikini. Needless to say, they got my message,” she wrote.

Jellison said first ladies have traditionally served as aide-de-camp to the president, dating back to Dolley Madison in the 1810s.

“It’s unique in that the president is so old and age is such a big issue, yet the first lady is advising the president on presumably political matters but also health concerns and historical reputational concerns,” she said.

But the situation Jill Biden may find herself in is not unprecedented. Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote, “I should have known how ill my husband was.” [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] He advised him to continue with his fourth campaign, Jellison said.

According to Jellison, when President Woodrow Wilson suffered a “severe” stroke in 1919 during his second term in office, his wife, Edith Wilson, “tried to advise the president to continue in his duties rather than, for example, resigning and having the vice president take over.”

The Bidens have been together for more than 40 years and operate as a team, advocating for each other, people who have worked closely with them say.

“First and foremost, she is his wife. They have been married for 47 years. She has been with him through rebuilding his family, two aneurysms, three presidential elections, six Senate races, the death of a son, the heartache and grief of family addiction, a brutal campaign in 2019 and a COVID-19 standoff with Donald Trump in 2020,” Alexander said. “Simply saying they were in the trenches together does not begin to explain their bond.”

“It’s natural for married couples to make decisions together that affect their lives, but as she has said many times, politics is his business. She supports his career and he supports hers,” Alexander said.

“She supports her husband when he makes decisions or when she and her husband make decisions that affect her or the family,” LaRosa said. “When a decision is made, they support each other in making the decision.”

“They’ve clearly decided to continue. [in the race,] She will be his biggest supporter and advocate,” LaRosa said.

As President Biden was considering whether to run for reelection in February 2023, Jill Biden, who made history as the first first lady to hold a full-time job outside the White House, took her cue from him and said she would support whatever path he chose.

“That’s Joe’s decision,” she said in an interview. CNN and“We support whatever he wants to do. If he wants to get involved, we’re there. If he wants to do something else, we’re there,” Biden said.
That same month, Biden was asked whether he would seek reelection.