Jill Biden’s new memoir, View from the East Wing, will sell well. She’s tirelessly promoting it. The interest in “what happened to Joe Biden and when” remains strong. And the appetite among Democrats – as well as many independents and some Republicans – for blaming someone, anyone, for Donald Trump’s reelection remains unslaked.
But for those of us with a particular interest in how leadership is exercised – or not – the mere fact of the book is a reminder of the power of the pillow, specifically of pillow talk, especially in the American presidency.
My use of the term “pillow talk” is to indicate an intimate relationship between husband and wife. Not every president and first lady have pillow talks, not for example, so far as we can tell, Donald and Melania Trump. Nor Richard and Pat Nixon. But they are the exceptions, not the recent rule. In the modern American presidency, most presidents are politically and personally heavily dependent on their wives. Which explains why their relationships are intimate – in different ways they are extremely close.
Presidents share with their wives the pleasures of the White House and the burdens of the office. Similarly, presidents share with their First Ladies information and ideas, duties and responsibilities, values, beliefs, and opinions. Think Gerald and Betty Ford, Jimmy and Roselynn Carter, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton (no eyerolling, please!), George W. and Laura Bush, and Barack and Michelle Obama.
From everything we know, Joe and Jill Biden have had, from the beginning of their marriage up to now, a relationship that was intimate. Given their shared triumphs, tribulations, and tragedies, we can even surmise that it was unusually intimate. Joe Biden was senator from the state of Delaware when he and Jill married. He stayed in the senate for about thirty years; then served eight years as vice president; and finally, four years as president. Every step of the way his wife Jill was close by, right by his side.
At the same time Jill Biden made a point of claiming her own identity. Specifically, as an independent woman with her own, separate and distinct, professional life. Having received an Ed.D. degree in educational leadership, she insisted on being called “Dr. Jill Biden,” which some thought pompous and others just a sign of the respect she was anyway due.
The one time in Dr. Biden’s life when, by her own account, her roles conflicted was when her husband, president of the United States, showed serious signs of serious aging. One the one hand she continued to be the independent woman who was the first First Lady to hold a paying job outside the White House. On the other hand, she continued to be the dutiful wife, consort and consigliere to the president. But, as it turned out, it was not possible for her responsibly to play both parts at the same time.
In her book, the portrait she paints of her marriage is in one all-important respect curiously, even weirdly, old-fashioned. When it came to her husband’s health, Jill Biden claims that an open and honest exchange, pillow talk, was unimaginable. It just wasn’t done. In an interview she insisted that her extreme discretion on such matters was “generational.” It was, she said, “the way we grew up.” In her book she asserted the same thing – that she never, ever, discussed her husband’s health with him. “It’s always been the nature of our relationship,” she wrote, “that we’ve maintained a veil of discretion around personal health.”
Well… each to their own. It’s not my place to question the ways of others. It is however my place to point out had Jill Biden had “the talk” with Joe Biden, the pillow talk, history might’ve turned out differently. It takes no great leap of the imagination to conjure a world in which Dr. Biden spoke with President Biden reasonably openly and honestly. In which she would draw on the power of the pillow to urge him to withdraw from, or better, not even to launch another presidential campaign. Hard to imagine a competent modern woman unable to see her husband as he was and, or, not wanting to use the power of the pillow to get him to leave the stage while there was still time.