There is little doubt that first ladies hold a unique position of influence and power concerning their presidential husbands, and first lady Jill Biden is certainly no exception.
Now comes an assertion from presidential historian Douglas Brinkley that First Lady Biden, in her quest to retain "power" and exact "revenge" against her family's critics, played a "vital part" in convincing President Joe Biden to run for a second term in the White House, the Daily Wire reported.
Given the widespread public perception that Biden is too old and incapable of serving out another four-year term as president, the developing situation seems to evoke comparisons to former first lady Edith Wilson and her alleged role as the unofficial "acting" president in place of her husband, Woodrow Wilson, after he is rumored to have been incapacitated by strokes during the final year and a half of his presidency.
Presidential historian Brinkley appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday to promote his new book about former President Jimmy Carter's single term in office and was asked not only about the possibility that President Biden could also end up being a single-term president but also about the rumors that he might be replaced as the Democratic Party's nominee before November's election and the first lady's role in his re-election campaign.
"She is the vital part. Dr. Jill Biden is it," Brinkley said of the Biden 2024 campaign. "You know, if you go back to 1952, Harry Truman could have run, and he didn't. Why? Well, the Korean War and, you know, other reasons. But -- but Bess wanted to go back to Independence [Missouri] of -- you know, she didn't like it in Washington."
"If you cut to '68, Lyndon Johnson was -- quit in March of '68 and people will say because of Walter Cronkite" and his sharp criticism of Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War, the historian continued. "No. The big thing was his health was bad, he had a bad heart, he was smoking, high blood pressure, tension, and Lady Bird Johnson didn't want to stay in. And she wanted -- let's go back to Texas and convinced Johnson to step down."
"So, in the Truman -- I'm giving you two -- Truman could have stayed on, and Johnson, and they both said, no, it's because their wives, their spouse, said, enough," Brinkley asserted. "That's not the case with Jill Biden. She likes power. She wants to stay. She wants some sense of revenge."
He noted how she has ensconced herself in the Washington D.C. area and observed of the rumors that Joe Biden would simply step aside for some other replacement, "And the idea of relinquishing it all after you've taken the slings and arrows of the last years of attacks, and at the last minute, just when you get all the delegates, you're going to say, 'I'm going to open it up to a bunch of people,' it's -- it's very childish when you read those kind of reports."
Brinkley was not wrong to point out the apparent contrast between first lady Jill Biden and her predecessors like former first ladies Bess Truman and Ladybird Johnson, but some would argue that the historian would have been more accurate in drawing a comparison between Jill Biden and Edith Wilson.
According to the Washington Monthly, among numerous other sources, former President Wilson is alleged to have suffered a series of "debilitating" strokes in the fall of 1919 that "left him partially paralyzed, intellectually diminished, and often incoherent."
His second wife, whom he'd married just four years earlier, is strongly rumored to have conspired with some of Wilson's closest aides and doctor to keep the full extent of his condition hidden from the American people, the media, Congress, and his own Cabinet by serving as a sort of "gatekeeper" who, in essence, quietly ran the nation on his behalf until he left office in March 2021, when his successor, President Warren Harding, was sworn in.
To be sure, there were scandalous rumors of such even at that time, and the first lady is said to have gone to great lengths to keep the subterfuge going for nearly a year and a half, at one point even propping up her half-paralyzed husband in bed amid carefully arranged lighting so that dubious lawmakers could personally meet with him and be falsely reassured that he remained in control.
The ruse appeared to work, at least until more information was disclosed or discovered several decades later, and in light of polls that show how the overwhelming majority of Americans harbor serious concerns about President Biden's physical and mental health, it is not unreasonable for some to similarly worry that Jill Biden may prop up a debilitated and diminished president so that she can continue to hold on to power and the luxuries of life in the White House.
