Is America ready for Shadow President Jill Biden?

Joe Biden Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Image –– Jill Biden Photograph by Tom Williams/Getty Images

Wars are being fought all over the globe. The Union is divided on numerous issues. Protests are consuming our cities and campuses. Meanwhile, it's a Presidential election year, and one of the choices is Joe Biden, who Seventy-seven percent of voters believe is too old for office. With these concerns, Americans should pay greater attention to the position of First Lady.

After all, the First Lady knows a president's true thoughts and aspirations more than his vice president, chief of staff, or close aides. They also know their spouses' actual health condition, be it psychological or physical. As we look to the 2024 election, we now have, at least, one candidate too old for the role. In a country of our complexity, presidents cannot know every detail, but should be able to accurately read from a teleprompter, of which Biden struggles. Staff can manage Biden’s public persona, but only First Lady Jill Biden knows his capacity to govern the world’s most powerful nation.

Is America ready for Shadow President Jill Biden?

In a February New York Times piece entitled “How Old Is Too Old to Be President? An Uncomfortable Question Arises Again,” Peter Baker notes, “The issue of age was thrust back onto the front burner with the special counsel report on Mr. Biden’s handling of classified information that described the president as a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ who had ‘diminished faculties in advancing age.’”

A 21st-century president has over 20 direct reports, makes innumerable decisions, and sends our men and women to war. This is a highly challenging job for a young, vigorous person. What does it mean for an 81-year-old with memory issues?

Questions about Biden’s physical condition are not unique. Presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Chester Arthur, and Warren Harding, have had serious health issues. Grover Cleveland had surgery performed on his mouth on a yacht in the Atlantic to maintain the secrecy of his condition.  Franklin D Roosevelt hid his congenital heart disease while running for his fourth term and died in April 1945, six months after his reelection. 

But Baker looks to Woodrow Wilson as a clear example of a too-old or too-sick president, “The most famous and serious presidential disability crisis came when Woodrow Wilson collapsed during a cross-country train trip promoting his League of Nations in 1919. Later, felled by a stroke, he was hardly in shape to govern, leaving his wife Edith Wilson and a handful of aides to shield him from public view and effectively manage his presidency for nearly a year and a half.”

Though Edith gets much of the credit for keeping the 28th president’s condition secret, even in 1919 she could not have maintained a shadow presidency without help. She enjoyed the connivance of the president’s personal physician and his private secretary.  Similar to the case with Cleveland, a president’s personal doctor is critical to concealing the true health of a president.  Yet it was Edith and her alone who had continual access to the president.