The Remaining Days of First Lady Jill Biden
The first lady’s White House tenure will end with one term, but Dr. Biden left her mark on the American story.
Two weeks ago, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden stood on the Democratic National Convention stage in Chicago reminding a packed arena of the aspects of her husband’s character that made her fall in love with him “all over again” throughout their 50-year marriage.
She spoke about President Joe Biden stopping to comfort people grieving along rope lines. There were many moments when her husband would inspire a child struggling with a stutter to find their confidence. And then, she reflected on this pivotal moment that would close out Joe Biden’s 50-year political career that began in 1970 on the New Castle County Council.
“And weeks ago when I saw him dig deep into his soul and decide to no longer seek reelection and endorse Kamala Harris,” she told the convention crowd that would over the course of four days spontaneously break out chanting “Thank you, Joe!”
The first lady spoke for just under five minutes before yielding the stage to her daughter, Ashley, who introduced Joe Biden before his address to Democrats in his final convention speech as president.
Since then, things have quieted down for the first lady.
After the convention, it was reported that the Bidens traveled to southern California and then to their Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home for a brief reprieve.
On Tuesday, Dr. Biden, a community college educator, took to her social media wishing her “fellow educators heading back to the classroom” and “students and families feeling a sense of excitement and optimism” good luck this back-to-school season.
On Labor Day, she also thanked the nation’s educators “for believing a better world is possible.”
“Each of you make that world real, one student at a time—and none of that could happen without the support of our unions,” she posted on her @flotus Instagram account.
This week, according to Vanessa Valdivia, press secretary for Jill Biden, the first lady is finishing up her lesson plans for her fall teaching semester, where she will continue to teach English and writing at NOVA community college, as she has done throughout her years in the White House. As she’s said many times, “Teaching isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am.”
Over the next six months, the first lady will continue to champion the causes that have defined her public life: supporting military families, advocating for increased educational opportunities, working to end cancer as we know it, and advancing women’s health research, Valdivia told East Wing Magazine.
“She’s excited to continue opening up the White House to more Americans, and bringing the country together for special moments both on the road and at the White House,” Valdivia said in an email.
While it’s not exactly clear how Dr. Biden will spend her remaining days in the White House, how past first ladies approached the end of their husband’s presidency provides a few clues.
“We’re still going to see [Dr. Biden] out on the campaign trail for two main reasons,” says Teri Finneman, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas who studies media portrayals of first ladies and co-editor of the forthcoming The Cambridge Companion to U.S. First Ladies set to release in 2025. “One, to certainly cement her husband’s legacy. And number two, she also does not want to see Donald Trump win the next election.”
A source familiar on campaigning agreed saying, “Of course, she’ll be out on the trail for Vice President Harris in the fall.”
Despite the circumstances of the Bidens’ exit from the White House—a poor presidential debate performance by Joe Biden in June that set off alarms in the Democratic Party—many feared that the 81-year-old incumbent would lose against Republican nominee former President Donald Trump. Finneman, host of The First Ladies podcast, believes seeing Jill Biden at campaign events will excite people.
“I think [Jill Biden] has been a very strong and respected first lady,” she says.
On July 21, the president, who was recovering from COVID, announced his decision on X not to run for reelection, succumbing to the pressure from members of his own party to step aside.
“The very difficult decision that the family made … had to be extremely difficult and disappointing when they had a clear vision of what their future was,” Finneman says. “So just from a human perspective, it’s hard to take in.”
The family is strong, says Finneman, who adds that “resilience with a capital ‘R’ defines the Bidens.”
Joe Biden would become one of only a handful of single-term presidents deciding not to seek reelection.
In fact, Joe Biden became the seventh such president not to seek reelection. The U.S. presidents that preceded him that were eligible, but decided not to run are James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman and, most recently, Lyndon B. Johnson. For a stretch of that time early on, it was customary for presidents to serve for one term.
Lady Bird Johnson’s remaining White House days
It would be Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson, wife of President Johnson, who First Ladies Studies scholars look to for similarities in Jill Biden’s remaining days in the White House.
Lyndon Johnson had been serving as vice president to President John F. Kennedy when on Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while traveling in a motorcade in Dallas for a campaign trip. President Kennedy was shot twice and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he was announced dead. On the same day of Kennedy’s death, Vice President Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States. A year later, Johnson would be elected president on Nov. 3, 1964.
Johnson’s presidency was fraught with tumultuous times—the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Malcolm X (Feb. 21, 1965), Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4, 1968), and Robert F. Kennedy (June 6, 1968). But it was the escalation of the Vietnam War, specifically the Tet Offensive, that created a crisis for President Johnson and ultimately caused him to announce on March 31, 1968, in a stunning prime-time televised address to the nation that he would not run for reelection, according to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.
Both Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden spent their entire public lives in public office. Lyndon Johnson served from 1937 until he left the presidency in 1969 and Joe Biden served for more than 50 years. Both served in Congress and eventually as vice presidents. Yet, the two situations come with their own uniqueness of the time, says Nancy Kegan Smith, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration from 1973 until 2013, retiring as Director of the Presidential Materials Division.
“Lady Bird Johnson in 1964, advised Lyndon Johnson to stay in when he was thinking about getting out of the [1964] election,” Smith, author of book chapters on Lady Bird Johnson and Michelle Obama, tells East Wing Magazine in a recent phone interview. “He had had a massive heart attack in 1957 and she really did not feel he would live through a second term.”
Lady Bird Johnson, Smith adds, very early on wanted her husband’s presidency to be a four-year term.
“Now of course it evolved and she was in discussions in late [1967] about whether she should back out of the presidential campaign,” says Smith, co-editor of Modern First Ladies – Their Documentary Legacy. “She was probably more prepared for Johnson having a four-year term than Dr. Biden because [Lady Bird Johnson] never envisioned Johnson really running again.”
Where similarities lie are in that both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden had friends in Congress. The Johnsons in their remaining days in the White House did a lot of congressional entertaining to thank their friends.
“Mrs. Johnson said in her White House Diary that she was going to make every day precious,” says Smith, co-author of U.S. First Ladies: Making History and Leaving Legacies and Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women. “I assume that will also be Dr. Biden’s attitude.”
Lady Bird Johnson in her last months in the White House focused on her diary, continued hosting social and ceremonial dinners, and wrapped up her beautification program both in the District of Columbia and nationally, Smith says. She dedicated national parks sites including Padre Island National Seashore in Texas in 1968 and advocated for the establishment of the Redwood National Park in California that same year. In fact, in 1969, Presidents Nixon and Johnson joined Governor Ronald Reagan in dedicating the 300-acre grove to Lady Bird Johnson and her campaign to preserve America’s natural beauty.
Notably, though, the last 10 days before she leaves, Lady Bird Johnson decides she wants to leave a project at the White House called the Children’s Garden, Smith says.
“She wants presidents to be able to sit in a peaceful garden and their wives with their grandchildren and their children,” Smith says, adding that the project was completed in 10 days and still exists today.
“She was so proud of the Children’s Garden,” Smith says. “She described it as a tiny little garden, which we want to wait for White House children and grandchildren for days to come.”
Jill Biden brought her work to the White House
In the weeks ahead, both Smith and Finneman assume that the Bidens will host their share of gatherings at the White House because of his years in public life. And, that Dr. Biden will focus on wrapping up the programs that were important to her. Last month, the Bidens made a joint appearance for their Cancer Moonshot initiative at the cancer research facilities at Tulane University in New Orleans. There, the president announced about $150 million in federal awards as part of the initiative that aims to cut the cancer death rate in half by 2047.
In their New Orleans appearance, the president and first lady said they know the pain of cancer after the death of their son, Beau, and want to change that for others.
"We are the land of possibilities," the president said, adding that the funding will help get new tools into operating rooms, Axios reported.
When it comes to legacy, Jill Biden brought with her to the White House something no other presidential spouse had before—her job. As second lady of the United States, Dr. Biden worked as a professor teaching English and writing and continued doing so as first lady at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has been a professor since 2009. So when her husband was elected president, she was insistent that nothing would change. Just this past spring she wrapped up another semester teaching.
“Being a first lady who kept her job throughout the presidency, that, very early on, was one of the most notable decisions that she made,” Finneman says. “I think that's a very important precedent for future first ladies.”
“Being a first lady who kept her job throughout the presidency, that, very early on, was one of the most notable decisions that she made,” Finneman says. “I think that's a very important precedent for future first ladies.”
And, the gesture will likely make the transition for a future first gentleman smoother if a male presidential partner wants to take on East Wing duties while still holding a job. Already, there are similarities with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who stepped away from practicing law once his wife, Kamala Harris, was elected the first female vice president on the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020. Emhoff, a vocal campaigner for his wife, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, has taken on the traditional role of second gentleman while teaching law at Georgetown University Law Center.
A first lady’s request of a first lady
Before Jacqueline Kennedy left the White House after her husband’s assassination—about two years into his presidency—she asked Lady Bird Johnson to continue her initiative of the White House restoration.
“Amazingly after this horrific assassination, [Jacqueline Kennedy] has the wherewithal to talk to Lady Bird about how she wants her to carry on her White House restoration efforts and make a permanent structure in the White House for dealing with preservation items,” Smith says.
Jacqueline Kennedy’s request was honored by Lady Bird Johnson and to this day, the White House Historical Association, a private nonprofit organization founded in 1961 by Jacqueline Kennedy, protects, preserves, and provides public access to the White House’s rich history. Jacqueline Kennedy’s efforts also included helping establish a permanent curator.
Jacqueline Kennedy sent Lady Bird Johnson a seven-page, handwritten letter from a yellow legal pad that detailed how to make what became the committee for preservation of the White House, which still exists today, a permanent structure, Smith says. President Lyndon Johnson followed through with an executive order in March of 1964.
“It’s really the only time you can point to where one first lady asked another first lady to carry on one of their projects,” Smith says.
“It’s really the only time you can point to where one first lady asked another first lady to carry on one of their projects,” Smith says.
As Jill Biden enters her remaining days as first lady, scholars agree her legacy will likely include the planning of Joe Biden’s presidential library in addition to her own contributions of the Joining Forces military family work, which she partnered with former First Lady Michelle Obama and continued when her husband was elected president. During her tenure as first lady, Jill Biden has uplifted education and educators while advancing the missions of two other key White House initiatives—the Biden Cancer Moonshot and the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research.
It was less than a year ago when the president and first lady launched the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research to fundamentally change how the United States approaches and funds research on women’s health, especially research on women in mid-life and beyond. President Biden signed the far-reaching executive order on March 18 that directs the most comprehensive set of executive actions ever taken to expand and improve research on women’s health, according to the White House. Indeed, the executive order is designed to ensure that women’s health is integrated and prioritized across the federal research portfolio and budget. The move came after President Biden called on Congress during the State of the Union to make a $12 billion investment to create a Fund for Women’s Health Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Time will tell if the initiative, barely brought into fruition, will have staying power. But, the seed money is there.
Memoirs
Many former first ladies have carved out their legacies by writing memoirs. That was something Lady Bird Johnson considered, says Finneman, because she did not think historians of the time were going to give her her due for everything she had done.
“One of the first things Lady Bird did was release her own memoir, A White House Diary, which is very popular,” says Finneman. “Certainly, we’ve seen that trend in recent decades with first ladies releasing their own books. That’s one of the things that I would expect to see happen—that Jill Biden will receive another major book deal that’s very specific about her time as first lady.”
This fall, three former first ladies are releasing books. Melania Trump’s memoir Melania is being released in October. Hillary Clinton is touring with her new book Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love and Liberty set to be released later this month. And Michelle Obama is releasing Overcoming: A Workbook, a companion book to The Light We Carry.
The Bidens’ White House tenure may not have been what they envisioned, Finneman says. Yet, in one way, it is fortunate.
“Rather than getting a potential answer in November, when at that point, if you lose [the election] it’s a quick transition,” Finneman says. Instead, the Bidens now have several months in office to think about how they are going to make the most of their remaining months serving people and thinking about how they want their legacies to finish in these last months in office.
Jill Biden’s legacy, although for only one term, left its mark on America, says Finneman.
“She is going to be remembered, I think, as a very warm and friendly and outgoing first lady who performed the role very well, who was a strong supporter of her husband and his administration,” Finneman says. “I think history will look back on her favorably.”