Managing a man’s emotions is no easy task, as any wife or partner will tell you. Managing a Great Man’s emotions requires superior skills. And dealing with the emotions of a Great Man in decline—if King Lear had a wife, not daughters, say—might well require superhuman ones. It is surely one of the hardest of all wifely duties.
Jill Biden, nine years younger than her husband, now finds herself in that unenviable position. Amid the howling over Joe Biden’s faltering presence, she is reportedly one of a few people who could possibly persuade him to choose a rocking chair on the beach house porch over his quest for a second term in office.
So, as “Joever” hashtags trend—the social media version of a bugle playing taps—and reports of Obama’s waning support (among others) land like another brick through the window, is it possible that Jill, alert and healthy herself, is missing the signals at home? Or is she in denial?
