What You Don't Know About Jill Biden

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Darlene Superville and Julie Pace are well established at the White House. Both employed by the Associated Press, Superville has been a White House correspondent since 2009 and Pace covered President Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign, and then all eight years of the Obama administration. She is now the executive editor of the AP. On Apr. 19, they released Jill: A Biography of the First Lady, an in depth look at Dr. Jill Biden, informed by both interviews with her and years of reporting. Superville and Pace spoke with ELLE.com about the book and the surprising things they’ve learned about Biden over the years they’ve spent covering her.

Many Biden family members, including the president, the first lady, Hunter Biden, and Valerie Biden Owens, have written memoirs. What do you think you were able to explore that a memoir couldn’t?

Pace: What we wanted to do is put a reported lens on the family story and to tell it from Jill’s perspective. Certainly, she has told her story through her own memoir, but we really wanted to take more of a reported look at that story. I think what she revealed in the conversations that we had with her for this is two things. One, to me, was I think she doesn’t get as much credit as she probably deserves for being quite politically astute. She has staked out this place [of] I’m the teacher, I’m separate from the politics. But actually, she’s quite politically influential when it comes to her husband’s career and how he should position himself.

The other thing that I hope the book conveys is she is the protector, I think, of the Biden legacy. She is the one who really tries to manage the story, to manage the narrative, to manage what the public sees and really importantly, what the public doesn’t. That comes from her political instincts, but also just her feeling like this family has put so much out there publicly at so many really difficult points of their life that she feels like it’s her responsibility to hold back some of their life.

We’re early in the administration, but I feel like we had a very clear idea of what Michelle Obama’s role and priorities were. Hillary Clinton, as well. How would you describe what Jill wants to do, what her role is, and what you think she’ll be known for?

Superville: One of the things that she will be known for, and certainly one of the things that she wants to do and what she has said publicly that she wants to do, is help the administration in any way that she can with any issue that they want her to help with. In the first year of the administration, she spent a lot of time traveling around the country during the pandemic, trying to encourage people to get vaccinated. If they’d gotten vaccinated to get that booster shot, if they’d gotten their shot to get their kids vaccinated, she was really out there traveling two, three times a week on that issue alone and doing that on top of her full-time job at the community college professor teaching twice a week.

Another thing that I think distinguishes her from some of the other first ladies that I covered is that Jill didn’t come to the White House and then sort of sit around at her desk and twiddle her thumbs and kind of say, “Okay, well, what will be my issue? What am I going to work on?” She came in knowing what she wanted to do. Support for community colleges was one of them working with military families is another longstanding issue of hers.

Pace: The thing I keep going back to with Jill Biden is that she’s both this very known and unknown quantity, I think, for people. And in some ways the time that we’re sort of living in has stripped her of some of those landmark moments that you have as first lady, like state dinners, right? Like a lot of the sort of social aspects [due to the pandemic].

It’s unusual for a first lady to continue to have a separate job. What do you think her continuing to teach says about her?

Superville: She has said that teaching is not just what she does, it’s who she is. She’s not yet ready to give it up and she can’t really yet envision herself not doing it. The other thing that she says about teaching is that when she married Joe, he was a senator, and it was a way for her to keep a part of her life for herself. She didn’t want to become taken over by being a Senate spouse and doing all these Senate related things. She still wanted to have a piece of her life that she could claim as her own.

Her husband is older than we would expect for a president. Her family has had so many tragedies. Do you think this is important? Are there ways that she is protective that maybe we don’t see?

Superville: I would say some of that probably comes from just the length of time that she’s been involved in politics. Politics can be a very cutthroat business, so in my mind, that’s where some of her protective nature comes from. Some of it can also have to do with her Italian heritage, [her upbringing with her] grandmother, mother, just being protective of the family in that way as well. Remember that when Beau Biden passed away in 2015, his kids were still very young. It’s my sense that she and Joe both felt a need to, I don’t want to say swoop in, but gather around those now fatherless grandchildren and be there for them, to support and shield them and protect them from whatever ugliness would’ve been out there in the world of politics.

How involved was the first lady with the book? How much access to her did you have?

Pace: It’s a reported book, so we approached this as reporters. We did three lengthy interviews with her and we think that really adds a lot of complexity and firsthand insights into her life. We talked to her not just about politics, we talked to her about her whole life. We started from the beginning and we went through present day.

What do you think people misunderstand about her?

Superville: I’m not sure that it's a misunderstanding as much as it may be that a lot of people don’t really know a whole lot about Jill. Remember when she first married Joe, he was already a senator but she didn’t move to Washington like many Senate spouses did back in those days. They made their home base in Delaware, she stayed in Delaware with Hunter and Beau trying to become their mother and form that family bond.

She was teaching and she came to Washington occasionally for functions, but she didn’t really pick up and move here. That was the way it was throughout his entire Senate career. Then she was second lady to Michelle Obama who literally got 99.9 percent of the media attention.

If Michelle Obama sneezed, it was a headline. Whereas with Jill Biden, she was able to operate a little more under the radar, I think. Now we’re at this position where she’s finally getting a chance to step out from behind the shadows and show the country who she is, what she can do, what she’s all about. I’m not sure that misunderstand is the right word. One of the things that we want to do with the book is help people get to know who is this woman who is now the first lady of the United States.

Do you have any favorite memories of her?

Pace: One stood out to me just in terms of when you think about the stamps that first ladies and first families want to put on a White House. We came out of the Trump administration where Melania Trump was like very glamorous and kind of almost detached. I would even describe Michelle Obama as pretty controlled. There was this moment, the first Valentine's Day, right after they came into office. She set up hearts on the lawn. It wasn’t so much the hearts that stood out me, but it was the Bidens out there [with] like their cups of coffee, right. She just had a big winter coat on. I kept thinking about my parents, out in their backyard on a winter day, with their jeans and their coffee mugs.

Superville: There was an event where she was campaigning with Joe and there were hecklers in the audience and someone tried to bum-rush him on the stage. She just stepped right in front of him and put up her arms and held off that intruder until real security people could come and escort them off the stage. That to me embodies how protective she is of her family. I could see some other first lady not doing anything, maybe even running off the stage herself. Here she is just doesn’t give it a second thought and just throws herself in front of her husband to protect him.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

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