She served as First Lady for more than three years, but following President Biden’s astonishingly shaky debate performance and subsequent calls for his resignation, Jill Biden – and her potential power – are suddenly in the spotlight more than ever.
“It seems 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 at Ohio University.
Biden’s role in her husband’s campaign and decision-making process came into sharper focus last week after his debate in Atlanta against former President Trump was described as “disastrous” even by allies.
The CNN debate broadcast, in which the 81-year-old Biden stumbled over some answers and at times stared blankly, sparked a firestorm of novel questions about his age and suitability for the office. Prominent figures from both sides of the aisle and several newspaper people Editorial offices called on Biden to drop out of the race rather than face his 78-year-old opponent Trump.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA – JUNE 27: U.S. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden address supporters during a CNN Presidential Debate Watch Party on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. President Biden and Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 election campaign. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Tasos Katopodis)
But Jill Biden, a professor at Northern Virginia Community College who sometimes serves as her husband’s top defender, made her support clear at an event two days after the debate debacle.
“Joe is not just the right person for the job. He is the only person for the job,” she said at a fundraiser for the election campaign in New York.
The next day, she reiterated her statement in a telephone interview with Vogue from Camp David, where the president’s family had reportedly met for a photo shoot and discussion.
“We will continue to fight” Jill Biden said about 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 allow these 90 minutes to define the four years of his term” and “will always do what is best for the country.”
Republican critics pounced on the glossy documentary — which is usually planned months in advance — which features the first lady posing in a $5,000 Ralph Lauren dress. The New York Post parodied the Vogue article with its own cover, featuring an unflattering photo of the president and the headline “Vague.”
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Since the debate, numerous conservative voices have turned against Jill Biden, claiming that she is responsible for keeping the president in the race.
“I no longer blame @POTUS Biden for not resigning. He no longer has the mental acuity to make important judgments about himself,” said billionaire investor Bill Ackman. wrote on X.
“However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the blame lies with @FLOTUS Jill Biden,” Ackman said.
The First Lady, he argued, “will become irrelevant once her husband is no longer president,” and accused Jill Biden of putting her own well-being above her husband’s health and the security of the country as a whole.
Following the debate, the Drudge Report printed a headline on its front page in all capital letters that read: “Cruel Jill Clings to Power.”
But Michael LaRosa, her former press secretary, rejected the First Lady’s criticism: “It’s really unfair to put this burden on her. She’s his wife. She’s not a politician.”
“It’s not her job 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, not his wife,” LaRosa said.
Jellison of Ohio University said much of the criticism of presidential spouses “is still based on numerous sexist ideas about women being ‘the power behind the throne.'”
“When political opponents don’t like a situation, they can portray the First Lady as a kind of Lady Macbeth figure,” the author said.
“On the other hand, if people like what a first lady does, they can always say, ‘Oh, look, she stands by her man – the dutiful husband.’ So I think a lot of the comments about first ladies, whether for or against, are based on old-fashioned ideas about the role of a wife,” Jellison said.
Elizabeth Alexander, the First Lady’s communications director, told ITK: “There is an inherent tension with all First Ladies – one that many women will be familiar with from their lives: You support them, but you can’t be so supportive that your own motives are questioned.”
“Women must constantly find the balance: They must speak their minds, but not too loudly; they must do their jobs well, but be quiet about it, otherwise they are too ambitious or power-hungry. Society has put all First Ladies, including Dr. Biden, in an impossible position – and Twitter/X has only reinforced that in today’s world,” Alexander said.
When asked if the First Lady was the only person who could persuade President Biden to pull out, a Democratic lobbyist and donor told ITK: “That’s my view, yes. Maybe his sister [Valerie Biden].”
“I don’t think it goes beyond that,” added the source, who asked not to be identified. “Someone from the inner circle. The inner circle is all family. The inner circle of Ron Klain, Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reed and Mike Donilon, those people will play a major role in organizing the next step.”
“The president has many political and strategic advisers – that was never her role,” Alexander, who also works as deputy assistant to the president, said of Jill Biden.
“At her core,” Alexander said of the First Lady, “she sees her office as a form of service. She wants to be the best First Lady she can be for the American people.”
Jill Biden is no stranger to the world of politics. She married her husband, then a senator from Delaware, in 1977. Over the years, she crisscrossed the country as her husband’s surrogate, supporting his agenda, campaigns and career while continuing her work as an educator.
Jill Biden has noticed that she sometimes takes matters – and the markers – into her own hands to convey her message to her husband.
In her 2019 memoir, “Where the Light Enters,” she recalls how a group of leading Democratic politicians showed up on her doorstep in 2003 and tried to persuade her husband to run 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 take on the president. [George W.] Bush. Meanwhile, I was sitting by the pool in my bathing suit and was pissed off,” she wrote.
“We had already decided we were not going to run, but people insisted on having these meetings with him. As the party consultants were going through their strategy for a theoretical presidential candidacy, my temper got the better of me,” Biden said.
“I decided I had to contribute something to this conversation. As I was walking through the kitchen, a marker caught my eye. I wrote ‘NO’ in big letters on my stomach and marched across the room in a bikini. Needless to say, they got the message,” she wrote.
Since Dolley Madison in the 19th century, first ladies have traditionally played the role of close adviser to the president, Jellison said.
“The unique thing is that we have a president of this age, whose age is a big issue, and that the first lady may be asking the president questions not just about politics but about health and history,” she said.
But the situation Jill Biden might find herself in is not unprecedented. Eleanor Roosevelt “must have known how diseased her husband was [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] and apparently advised him to continue in the fourth campaign anyway,” said Jellison.
When Woodrow Wilson suffered a “debilitating” stroke during his second term in 1919, Jellison said, “his wife, Edith Wilson, tried to advise him to stay in office and not, for example, to resign and hand power to the vice president.”
After more than four decades together, the Bidens act as a unit and support each other, say those who have worked closely with them.
“First and foremost, she is his wife — for 47 years. She was with him as he rebuilt a family, endured two aneurysms, went through three presidential campaigns, went through six Senate campaigns, lost their son, experienced the heartache and grief of family addiction, went through the brutal 2019 election campaign, and ran against Donald Trump in 2020 during COVID,” Alexander said. “To say they were in the trenches together doesn’t even begin to explain their bond.”
“As much as a married couple makes decisions together that affect their lives, they certainly do that, but as she has said so many times I’ve lost count – politics is his profession. She supports his career and he supports hers,” Alexander said.
“She supports him when he makes decisions or when they make decisions together that affect her and the family,” LaRosa said. “Once they make the decisions, they support each other through it.”
“They obviously decide to continue [in the race]and she will support and encourage him tirelessly,” LaRosa said.
When President Biden was considering running for re-election in February 2023, Jill Biden – the Made history as the first wife of a president to hold a full-time position outside the White House – described how she looked to him and supported every path he took.
“It’s Joe’s decision,” she said in an interview with CNN“And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re in. If he wants to do something else, we’re in too.”
That same month, President Biden was asked if he would seek another term.
“Let me ask you the question everyone is asking: Are you running?” ABC News’ David Muir asked the president.
“Apparently someone interviewed my wife today.” he answered.
“I have to call her and find out,” he joked.
Alex Gangitano contributed.
