USA TODAY International Edition
First lady wears many hats
In the role without a rule book, the teacher and “learner” sets her own mileposts.
Most people now call Jill Biden the first lady of the United States, but to her students at Northern Virginia Community College, “I am – first, foremost and forever – their writing professor, Dr. B,” she said proudly on a recent trip to promote the value of community colleges. h She has high standards, she said last week during a visit to Sauk Valley Community College in Dixon, Illinois, and her students don’t typically miss exams or ask for extra time on assignments. h “A few semesters ago, I got a text that said, quote, ‘ On my way to the hospital to have my baby; research paper will be late,’ ” said Biden, according to the White House pool report on her visit. “To which I replied, ‘ Excuses, excuses.’ ”
In that one anecdote, Biden illustrated both the remarkable commitment of her students and her own engaging sense of humor: To borrow a famous descriptor for male politicos, she seems like a gal you’d want to have a beer with.
Many wonder what Biden’s first 100 days as first lady tell us to expect about her next four years in the most famous unpaid and undefined job in the world.
“This is a role without a rule book, quite literally there is no job description,” says Natalie Gonnella- Platts, who studies first ladies around the world as director of the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in University Park, Texas, near Dallas. “It’s defined by who you are and what you bring to the position, your passion, your background, the era in which you live, and the changing role of women more broadly in society.
“First ladies are hostesses, teammates, champions and policy advocates. What’s interesting about Dr. Jill Biden is she’s worn all those hats in her first 100 days in the role.”
Biden, 69, is hardly unfamiliar – she was second lady for eight years during the Obama administration – yet she and her team are taking some care to reintroduce her as a crucial member of President Joe Biden’s administration.
She has laid out a substantive agenda of her own ( education, cancer research, support for military families), she has the first ( for a first lady) outside paying job, and she has the Biden family knack for connecting with ordinary people.
She has had to forgo some traditional FLOTUS duties, such as host
ing the White House Easter Egg Roll amid the COVID- 19 pandemic, but she left it to her spokesman to announce the cancellation. Likewise, her rep handled the announcements about the Bidens’ rambunctious rescue dog, Major, who has been involved in several nipping incidents and has to undergo off- site behavior training.
Meanwhile, in between her Zoom teaching, Biden has checked off the more serious, un- flashy items on her todo list: She has jetted off to visit schools in New Hampshire and Alabama; military bases and facilities in Washington state and Arlington, Virginia; a cancer treatment center in Richmond, Virginia; and Delano, California, the historic birthplace of the United Farm Workers labor union co- founded by César Chávez, the Mexican American icon whose bust now adorns the Oval Office.
During a three- day trip last week, Biden visited a community health center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to see a vaccine distribution site. There she encountered a woman preparing for a jab who confessed she was a little scared.
“Do you want me to come stand with you?” Biden asked, according to the pool report. “I can’t look, either. Look at me. It doesn’t hurt. Really. It’s mostly in your head.”
Despite the pandemic, the masks and the distancing, Biden comes off as warm and approachable, and her team has made sure to promote her penchant for pranks and surprises, her love of the family dogs, her ease in holiday video messages with the president, and her close relationship with their two surviving children and seven grandchildren.
She hasn’t yet danced with Jimmy Fallon on TV ( as Michelle Obama did) but she commiserated with Kelly Clarkson on her show about the miseries of divorce and how to survive it. Biden is not the first divorced FLOTUS but she’s the first to talk openly about it on TV.
“Compared to previous first ladies, she’s off to a fast start,” says Myra Gutin, a first lady historian and professor emerita at Rider University in New Jersey. “This is not Jill Biden’s first rodeo; she really does know what goes on at the White House because she had a front- row seat to the first lady’s role.”
Gutin says Biden has earned goodwill right off the bat because she is so different from Melania Trump, who was still living in New York at this point in her husband’s presidency.
Given the restrictions of COVID- 19, Biden has been more available than Trump ever was pre- pandemic, speaking about her FLOTUS agenda during multiple virtual appearances and helping to sell the administration’s American Rescue Plan on the “Help Is Here” in- person tour.
She hasn’t received an overwhelming amount of media attention in the same way some of her predecessors did. Much of what Biden has said and done has been uncontroversial, and she’s had few tricky shoals to navigate in terms of race, feminism or immigrant background.
And so far, no one has gotten traction attacking her, not even social media trolls who claimed a pair of patterned tights she wore after returning to Washington from a visit to California were somehow scandalous.
“Her warmth, her presence is working very positively,” Gutin says. “She really has been engaged, she’s done a number of events and of course she’s teaching. Those things have acted to help her create a very positive atmosphere.”
Some historians think Biden is building a role that transcends the antique origins of the first lady job, one that has the potential to transform the way Americans think about it.
“In many ways, the primary function of a first lady, depending on how the president decides to take advantage of this amazing resource, is public outreach, and that’s particularly well- suited to women and to teachers,” says Mary Anne Borrelli, a professor at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, and author of “The Politics of the President’s Wife.”
Borrelli sees Biden’s first 100 days as reflective of her previous time as second lady, as an enthusiastic campaigner, and as the wife of a U. S. senator for more than three decades.
“That’s why it feels authentic, there’s a consistency to her performance,” Borrelli says. “This is a deeply considered and thoughtfully developed self- presentation. So I expect to see the same growing and considering and thinking.”
Biden won’t be the same woman on Jan. 20, 2022, that she was on Jan. 20, 2021, but she will be recognizable, Borrelli predicts.
“She’s a learner, and she’ll continue to learn and get even better, and where she’s not very good, she’ll find ways to get even better because that’s what teachers do,” she says. “She’ll go with her strengths, will use them carefully and well.”
Biden’s choice of Clarkson’s show for her first solo TV interview since the inauguration was smart, Gutin says. Biden talked about her first marriage and divorce, trying to instill hope in Clarkson about her divorce woes.
“( Biden) was acting as a mom, she was very gentle and encouraging and I think people respond to that message,” Gutin says. “It seemed like a down- toearth, natural and human response to a problem and I’m sure a lot of women were able to relate to it.”
The role of FLOTUS has changed in two centuries and will continue to do so, though no future FLOTUS will get a paycheck; that’s prohibited by antinepotism laws, Borrelli says.
The pandemic already has put the kibosh on some traditional duties, such as the Egg Roll, which was canceled for the second year in a row, or co- hosting the black- tie White House dinner for the National Governors Association ( this year, the president addressed the governors virtually).
Nicole Hemmer, research scholar at Columbia University with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project, author of several books and host of several podcasts, argued in an opinion piece for CNN that’s all to the good.
“If the position is going to remain, it should reflect the values of equality and autonomy that emerged long after the job of first lady did,” Hemmer wrote.
“That ( Biden) has been able to carve a space for herself that is not circumscribed by her husband’s role is a significant step, one that has the potential to transform the way Americans see the office.”