Jill Biden: Biden’s quiet influence

A day after President Joe Biden struggled during a 90-minute debate and stoked voter concerns about his age and health, Jill Biden stood before a group of wealthy donors at a New York fundraiser and tried to explain what they had all witnessed.

“‘Jill, I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t feeling good,’ the president confessed,” she told them. “I said, ‘Look, Joe, I’m not going to define your four years as president in 90 minutes.'”

It offered an early glimpse into the president’s state of mind and how he evaluates his debate performance, which was widely criticized as a major blow to his campaign.

Doubts about Biden’s candidacy were beginning to grow, but Biden’s aides would not say whether he would withdraw from the race. “Even if he gets beaten, Joe will stand up. And that’s what we’re doing right now,” Biden said.

The first lady has always been at her husband’s side throughout his decades-long career, from his time as a Delaware senator to his time as commander in chief, and has served as the defining voice behind many of Biden’s policy choices.

While presidents often turn to close-knit family members for big decisions, Mrs. Biden is one of the few top advisers with the most influence over the president and could ultimately help him decide whether it’s time to withdraw from the race.

“It’s fair to call her Biden’s closest adviser,” veteran Democratic political strategist Hank Sheinkopf told the BBC. “Family is incredibly important to him, and Jill Biden’s role will be even more important.”

His sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who served as his campaign manager while he was a senator, and his son, Hunter Biden, are also among the president’s most trusted aides.

According to the BBC’s US partner CBS, in the aftermath of the debate, Biden headed for a long-planned trip with his family to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, where they discussed the fate of the campaign and urged them to keep fighting. Hunter Biden was one of the family members most vocal in urging his father to continue the campaign, CBS reported.

But as Democrats’ misgivings about the 81-year-old president’s physical and mental stamina have become public knowledge in recent days, many in the party are hoping the first lady will show signs of him wavering as a presidential candidate.

Instead, she has continued her campaign, visiting the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan this week for a series of political and official events.

“There are a lot of rumors out there, so I’ll reiterate what my husband has said very clearly: Joe is the Democratic nominee and he will beat Donald Trump, just like he did in 2020,” Mrs. Biden told supporters at a campaign event in Traverse City, Michigan, on Wednesday.

However, Mrs. Biden’s influence in the West Wing of the White House is not unique.

Nancy Keegan Smith, president of the First Ladies Research and Education Association, said there are historic parallels between Biden and previous first ladies.

“Most presidents rely on their wives for honest advice because they are the people closest to them,” she said.

She gave the example of Lady Bird Johnson, wife of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who advised and ultimately convinced her husband, who became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to run for the White House in August 1964 with an inspiring letter.

Four years later, in 1968, she changed her mind and told him not to run for reelection, and he listened to her, Keegan Smith said.

Many in the Democratic Party are watching to see whether a similar scenario plays out next month, drawing even more attention to Biden.

The first lady keeps a busy schedule: She’s the first East Wing member to take up a day job teaching English at a community college in Northern Virginia, and when she’s not teaching, she’s often out campaigning for her husband.

“Many of our modern first ladies have been in politics for a long time and have been political confidants to their husbands,” Katherine Jellison, a professor at Ohio University who studies first ladies, told BBC News.

The president proposed marriage five times before Biden accepted, and the two married in 1977, five years after Biden lost his first wife and daughter in a car accident that also injured his two sons.

When he decided not to run for president in 2016, Trump told 60 Minutes that it was “the right decision for my family,” in part because of the loss of his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

Kagan Smith said Mrs. Biden was particularly influenced by her husband’s decision not to run for president in 2003, pointing to a scene depicted in the first lady’s 2019 memoir, “Where the Light Enters.” In the book, she recalls lounging poolside while Democratic advisers encouraged her husband to launch a campaign. Clad in a bikini, she wrote “no” on her stomach in marker and walked through the meeting. Mr. Biden did not run for office that year.

But she has also come under pressure in recent days after coming under fire for praising her husband after a presidential debate, despite his poor performance there.

“Joe, you did a great job. You answered every question. You had all the facts,” she told him onstage at a post-debate rally in Atlanta, a video of the exchange that was widely mocked on social media.

Some Republicans have capitalized on Democratic concerns, blaming the first lady for Biden’s debate performance. In a post on X, Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican from Wyoming, accused Mrs. Biden of “elder abuse” by “dragging an unarmed man onstage and forcing him to compete for wits.”

Immediately after the debate, the conservative website Drudge Report ran a headline on its front page that read, “Cruel Jill Clings to Power.”

“It’s really unfair to put the burden on her. She’s his spouse, she’s not a politician,” her former press secretary, Michael LaRosa, told The Hill. “It’s not her responsibility to save the Democratic Party.”

Meanwhile, Biden stressed that the president’s efforts to win reelection will continue, as the outcome of the November election will be crucial.

“Every race matters, every race is hard,” the first lady said in Vogue magazine’s August cover story. “Every race is different. But this one’s urgency is different. We know what’s at stake, and Joe is asking the American people to unite to draw a line under all this bad faith.”

That sense of urgency is what the Biden campaign wants her to convey to voters. In a statement to the BBC, they called her an “effective messenger” in the campaign.

“As a teacher, mother and grandmother, she is uniquely positioned to connect with key constituencies across the country and speak to the President’s vision for America,” the statement said.

Still, her unwavering support, combined with the White House’s denial of media reports that the president was considering dropping out, has not quelled the growing uncertainty surrounding the Democratic nominee. The fallout has sparked a backlash from Democrats, donors and some lawmakers who have publicly called for the president to drop out of the race.

“Joe’s been beaten down and conceded defeats his whole life, and when he concedes defeat, he goes the extra mile, and that’s exactly what he’s doing, but he needs your help,” she told supporters in Michigan on Wednesday.

“We can’t choose which chapters of history we write, but we can choose who leads us,” she added.

For Mrs. Biden, that choice remains with her husband.