Managing a man’s emotions is no easy task, as any wife or partner will tell you. Managing a Great Man’s emotions requires superior skills. And dealing with the emotions of a Great Man in decline—if King Lear had a wife, not daughters, say—might well require superhuman ones. It is surely one of the hardest of all wifely duties.
Jill Biden, nine years younger than her husband, now finds herself in that unenviable position. Amid the howling over Joe Biden’s faltering presence, she is reportedly one of a few people who could possibly persuade him to choose a rocking chair on the beach house porch over his quest for a second term in office.
So, as “Joever” hashtags trend—the social media version of a bugle playing taps—and reports of Obama’s waning support (among others) land like another brick through the window, is it possible that Jill, alert and healthy herself, is missing the signals at home? Or is she in denial?
ADVERTISEMENT
Mean-spirited conversations on social media in recent days have taken a turn from one Shakespearian tragedy to another—she is no longer in King Lear, but desperately holding on to the perks of FLOTUS-power as a Lady MacBiden!
Those who blame Jill Biden’s inferred lust for power seem to believe she is so used to White House staffers, color guards and diplomatic receptions that she can’t bring herself to tell her husband the hard truth. But in others’ tellings, she’s not that kind of political wife.
Despite 12 years in the White House—the first eight living in the Naval Observatory, and the last four at 1600 Pennsylvania—a source close to the family says she was never a DC political player, and had little use for the social scene either.
"The dark side of the internet says she loves the perks,” the source tells The Daily Beast. “But, if he didn’t want to do this she would be in an Audi driving to Rehoboth Beach and never looking back. She is indifferent to the Washington social class.”
She has been an effectively low-key FLOTUS, furthermore, picking up a few projects like the “Cancer Moonshot” and education-related programs while maintaining her teaching career. (Jill is “the first Presidential spouse to maintain a career outside the White House,” the White House website notes.)
“Her fulfillment doesn’t come from defining herself publicly,” the Beast’s source continued. “So when she is advising her husband, it comes down to what does he want, what is best for his legacy and how he is perceived.”
Much recent reporting has suggested that the Bidens are cocooned away from the gory details of defections and dismal polling. But both are in fact reading the news all the time.
And if she read the Washington Post yesterday, Jill likely noticed an essay addressed directly to her from Sally Quinn, widow of another Great Man, Ben Bradlee. In her piece, Quinn tells the story of first noticing signs of Bradlee’s dementia in 2006 after an incident with with Annie Leibovitz, the same celebrity photographer who recently played a starring role in the post-debate Biden “family weekend” where, gathered for a Vogue shoot, Jill was said to have been among the most forceful voices urging her husband to hold fast.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden together at a campaign event in Wallingford, Pennsylvania in March 2024.
Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersQuinn recounts how she first knew something was wrong when Ben told her that Leibovitz—who wanted to shoot the 85-year-old on a beach near the home in the Hamptons—had talked her husband into unbuttoning his shirt for photos, despite him having agreed with Quinn to keep it on if she asked him to remove it. “He didn’t remember posing,” Quinn recalled.
She spent the next few years trying to shield him from ever more humiliating public appearances and concludes: “Ben died with his dignity intact. And his legacy as well.”
Jill will not be moved by the remembrance and its thinly-veiled comparisons, says the source. “The Sally Quinn piece I know for sure will make her double down,” they explained. “The more people like Quinn and David Axelrod are pushing (Biden) out, the more likely they will be to stay in.”
But Jill’s pillow talk—or beach chair talk—would not be the deciding force in the President’s decision to step back from the Democratic ticket, if he does, the source added. “She is probably sitting home and saying they have just begun to fight. But I would caveat that by saying this is not the kind of thing that she alone would have the full power over.”
Ultimately, as has been reported, relatives including son Hunter, sister Valerie Biden and brother Jimmy Biden as well as longtime political pals Mike Donilon, EU ambassador Mark Henry Gitenstein and maybe former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd will be influential.”What they think as a group will really matter—if there is consensus. I think that is more powerful than Jill alone.”
Like all great dramas, we, the audience, sense this family saga writ national is reaching a third act. In so many of Shakespeare's great tragedies involving kings and leaders, it's the conniving advisors who hold the cards, and ultimately lead their ruler to greatness of ruin. Rarely, but not never, do women (and wives) determine the outcome. Time will tell, then, whether Jill proves up to the modern-day social media bards.
