Jill Biden: The calming influence of Biden’s closest adviser

A day after US President Joe Biden struggled in a 90-minute debate that only fueled voters’ concerns about his age and health, Jill Biden stood before well-heeled donors at a New York fundraiser and tried to explain what they saw.

“‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel so good,'” the president confessed, she told him. “I said, ‘Look, Joe, we’re not going to let 90 minutes define your four years as president.'”

It offers an early glimpse into the president’s mindset and how he rates his debate performance, which was widely panned as a major blow to his campaign.

Doubts about Mr Biden’s candidacy began to spread, with his closest adviser uncertain whether he would drop out of the race. “When he gets knocked down, Joe gets back up, and that’s what we’re doing today,” Mrs. Biden said.

The first lady has often served as a critical voice behind many of Mr. Biden’s policy choices during his decades-long career alongside her husband, from his time as a Delaware senator to becoming commander-in-chief.

While the president often turns to his tight-knit family on major decisions, Mrs. Biden is one of a handful of top advisers who wield the most influence over the president and could ultimately help him decide whether it’s time to drop out of the race.

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

Among his staunchest confidants are the president’s younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who served as his campaign manager during his years in the Senate, as well as his son, Hunter Biden.

After the debate’s outcome, Mr Biden joined his family for a long-planned trip to Camp David, the president’s retreat in Maryland, where they discussed the future of his campaign and urged him to keep fighting, according to the BBC’s US partner. CBS. Hunter Biden was one of the most vocal family members urging his father to stay in the race, CBS reported.

But as Democratic concerns about the 81-year-old president’s physical and mental stamina have crept into public view in recent days, many within the party have looked to the first lady for any sign of wavering about her candidacy.

Instead, she continues to hit the campaign trail, traveling to the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan for a series of political and official events this week.

“Because there’s so much talk, I repeat what my husband has said clearly and unequivocally: Joe is the Democratic nominee and he’s going to beat Donald Trump, just like he did in 2020,” Mrs. Biden once told supporters. Wednesday campaign event in Traverse City, Michigan.

Mrs. Biden’s influence in the West Wing, however, is not unusual.

Nancy Keagan Smith, president of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education, said there were historical parallels between Mrs Biden and the former first lady.

“Most presidents rely on the off-color advice of their wives because she is the person who is usually closest to them,” she said.

She points to Lady Bird Johnson, wife of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who advised her husband—eventually persuading him through a moving letter—to run for the White House in August 1964 after he became president following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Four years later in 1968, she changed her mind, asking not to run for re-election. He listened, said Ms Keegan Smith.

Many in the Democratic Party are waiting to see if a similar scenario unfolds in the coming months, drawing more attention to Mrs. Biden.

The first lady keeps a busy schedule. She is the first in the East Wing to hold a day job teaching English at a Northern Virginia community college. When she is not teaching, she is often on the road preaching for her husband.

“Most modern first ladies have been in the political game for a long time and are political sounding boards for their husbands,” Ohio University professor Catherine Jellison, who studies first ladies, told BBC News.

 Joe and Jill Biden pictured having breakfast with Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign

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

When he decided not to run for the presidency in 2016, he 60 Minutes said “It was the right decision for the family.” He cited that his reasoning was due to the loss of his son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

Mrs. Biden in particular played a role in her husband’s decision not to run for president in 2003, Mrs. Keagan Smith said, pointing to a scene recounted in the first lady’s 2019 memoir, Where the Light Enters. In the book, she recalls relaxing by the pool as inside Democratic advisers encouraged her husband to launch a campaign. Dressed in a bikini, she wrote “No” in magic marker on her stomach and walked through the meeting. Biden did not enter the race that year.

But the first lady has also come under pressure in recent days, facing criticism after a presidential debate for praising her husband after his poor performance on the debate stage.

“Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts,” she told him on stage at a post-debate rally in Atlanta. A clip of the exchange was widely mocked on social media.

Some Republicans have also seized on the Democratic concern, blaming the first lady for Mr. Biden’s debate performance. Representative Harriet Hagman, Republican of Wyoming, also accused Mrs Biden of “elder abuse” in a post on X, for “bringing him out on stage to engage in a battle of wits while unarmed”.

The Drudge Report, a conservative website, ran a headline on its front page shortly after the debate that read: “Cruel Jill clings to power.”

“It is really unfair to burden him. She is his wife. She’s not a politician,” her former press secretary, Michael LaRosa, told The Hill. “It’s not up to her to save the Democratic Party.”

Mrs. Biden, meanwhile, insisted that the president’s bid for re-election will continue as the stakes are high in November.

“Every campaign is important, and every campaign is difficult,” the first lady said Vogue for their August cover story. “Every campaign is unique. But this one, the urgency is different. We know what’s at stake. Joe is asking the American people to come together to draw a line in the sand against all this vitriol.

That’s the urgency the campaign hopes it will be able to convey to voters. In a statement to the BBC, the Biden campaign called Mrs. Biden an “effective messenger” on the campaign trail.

“As a teacher, mom 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 steadfast support, coupled with the White House’s dismissal of media reports that the president is weighing his exit, still hasn’t eased the growing uncertainty about the Democratic ticket. The result has led Democrats, donors and some lawmakers to publicly call for him to withdraw from the presidential race.

“Joe has been knocked down and his whole life counts… when it counts, he works harder. And that’s what he’s doing, but he needs your help,” she told Michigan supporters Wednesday.

“We don’t choose the chapter of our history, but we can choose who leads us through it,” she added.

For Mrs. Biden, that choice remains her husband.