OPINION:
There is one key reason why President Biden is stubbornly insisting — despite calls from some fellow Democrats to step aside — that he will not drop out of his race for reelection: Jill Biden.
The first lady is clearly the driving force behind his stumbling, grumbling, bumbling, mumbling bid for a second term despite obvious signs that he is not up to the rigors of the world’s toughest job for four more years.
Jill hungrily appears to want to cling to the White House more tenaciously than Mr. Biden. She clearly loves the public spotlight and the perks of the office too much to let them go.
If she had not and had his and the country’s best interests at heart, she would have convinced her husband months ago that it was time to pack it in and retire to a life of leisure in Delaware. She sees him more intimately than anyone, and she knows better than anyone his capabilities and limitations.
Moreover, she is his most trusted adviser.
One might think that after 35 years as the wife of a U.S. senator, eight years as second lady to a vice president and four years as first lady, Jill might be ready to take a break.
But instead of laying the groundwork for a graceful exit, she is the driving force and most visible cheerleader behind Mr. Biden’s reelection effort. Consider that telling moment in Atlanta immediately after the president left the debate stage on June 27 and greeted cheering supporters following his disastrous performance against former President Donald Trump: “Joe, you did a great job!” a frenzied first lady shouted into a microphone. “You answered every question. You knew all the facts.”
Then, turning to the cheering partisan crowd, she asked: “And then what did Trump do? Lie!” she and the promoted supporters responded with gusto.
It appeared that Jill, the teacher, was pumping up a shy first grader, not the president of the United States. The only difference was that she did not give him a gift pencil or a new ruler.
A day later, at a Biden post-debate campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, there was Jill again, wearing a black dress with the word “Vote” plastered across its entire surface. If the goal was to detract from the speech her husband gave with the aid of a teleprompter, it worked. The dress seemed to get at least as much media coverage as the speech.
“[President] Biden might have been speechifying, but that dress did the talking,” gushed New York Times chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman.
The dress detracted from the speech, which the Biden campaign staff did not mind at all. And neither did Jill, who loves public attention. And that is a big part of the reason why she is not encouraging her husband to step aside. She is reluctant to give up the spotlight.
This Jill Biden is far different from the shy political spouse this reporter first met in 1987 — 37 years ago — in Wilmington, Delaware. The occasion was a party thrown the night before then-Sen. Biden planned to announce his Democratic run for president in 1988.
This reporter spotted a shy Jill Biden sitting alone on the sidelines as Mr. Biden’s supporters whooped it up in a hotel ballroom. I went over and introduced myself as a reporter for USA Today and asked why she was watching the revelry rather than joining in. She confessed that she was still new to the game of political commotion and had not yet learned to wade into crowds easily.
She learned quickly enough after that.
Mr. Biden’s 1988 White House bid flamed out over a charge of plagiarism dating back to his time in law school. Imagine a presidential candidacy crashing over such a charge today. This shows how our political standards have changed over the last four decades, for better or worse.
Which brings us back to the harsh reality of today. Jill Biden, far from the shy wife of a senator I met back in 1987, now holds in her hands the fate of a nation. If she tells her husband to battle on, he will. And if she tells him to retire to Delaware, he will.
In the end, it all depends on what Jill wants to do. It’s up to her.
• Richard Benedetto is a retired USA Today White House correspondent and columnist. He teaches journalism and political science at American University and in the Fund for American Studies program at George Mason University.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.