A few years ago, when she was the wife of the Vice President and hoping to be the wife of the President, Jill Biden wrote a memoir. I bought it, I read it, and it is currently holding up one of the broken legs of my coffee table. 

It wasn’t particularly well-written and there were few salacious details, but it was okay in its bland, “I want to be loved by everyone” way. She threw in a few anecdotes about her Italian grandparents, who didn’t sound at all like any Italian grandparents I’ve encountered in my 62 years on earth, including my own. She talked about secretly smoking as a teen, and growing up in Willow Grove or thereabouts, and her sisters and all the other stuff that goes into the memoirs of famous people, to make them look like regular folk. Except Jill isn’t “regular folk.” She made the big time, as FLOTUS.

To be fair, she’s always been big time adjacent, at least since she hooked up with Joe Biden. While the details of how she met the president are a little fuzzy, suffice it to say that both Hunter and the late Beau Biden were little boys when she married their father, after the tragic deaths of their mother and baby sister Naomi in that notorious car crash. In her memoir, it’s all a nice platonic story of a woman who admired a politician, eventually became his girlfriend and ultimately, his wife. I won’t delve into stories that suggest otherwise, because they’re not relevant to the point of this column.

Which is this: that nice Philly girl who did not grow up in Philly and who has the fashion sense of an upholsterer is now the only major thing standing between her husband and a happy, peaceful retirement. He is clearly not up to the job of president, and it didn’t take a 90-minute debate performance to tell us that. Joe Biden has been failing and struggling for months if not years, and it’s like we’ve all been living in a 21st-century version of The Emperor’s New Clothes: the president is not competent to lead the country, and everyone around him is telling him he’s wearing a lovely suit when he’s butt naked.

The people who want him to stay in office and who are pretending that he’s totally fine are mostly hangers-on and apparatchiks who will not get another position in government for the rest of their lives. That means you, Karine Jean-Pierre. Most of them are under the age of 40, and see this as an exciting adventure that they don’t want to end. Their attachment to the ideals of this country are less solid than their attachment to their social media and bank accounts. But interestingly, even if they were inclined to tell Joe to go, he wouldn’t listen to them.

And those conservatives who are also, suspiciously, lobbying for him to stay aren’t doing it because they think that he’s a great candidate, or because they agree with his position on foreign affairs, abortion, trans issues and the economy. No, these “conservatives,” — and I use that term very loosely — think that their preferred candidate Donald Trump will have an easier time beating Biden than practically anyone else except that little girl, you know Senator, that little girl who rode that bus. And for that reason alone, they are dishonestly pushing for him to stay, using phrases like “but the people voted for him to be the Democratic nominee!” — as if what Democrats vote for has ever been of any particular importance to the GOP.

No, the only person who has any pull with Joe Biden is his wife of five decades. But Jill Biden will not do that. Dr. Jill is so wedded to her position at the center of authority and attention, that she will not allow her husband to fade gracefully, and with dignity, into the background of our political narrative. She knows that her destiny is tied to his, much like the Gen Z and millennial slackers working at the White House, but she also knows that she has power and authority and a voice that they don’t. And she won’t use it for the good of the country.

When I first read Jill’s memoir, I found it amusing and vaguely charming in a “local girl makes good” way. I failed to notice the Lady Macbeth aspects of the woman’s character, the constant desire for attention and the cloaking of narcissism behind a crusade at “self-betterment.” Yes, she was a good stepmother to her boys, and she exudes “niceness” along with the comforting sound of flattened Philly diphthongs when she speaks. She isn’t threatening in a drop-dead gorgeous Melania, or a wow-look-at-those-arms Michelle way. She’s a slightly more fashionable version of the ladies who go to the CVS in Delco, and I’m grading on a curve.

But she has allowed her ailing husband to languish in the spotlight, and she has acted more like a seeing-eye dog than a wife. And that’s cruel, and anyone who has ever dealt with an ailing spouse or family member sees it.

Philly girl needs to get this message, in the clearest, most flattened diphthongs possible: do the right thing, and take your husband home. 

Christine Flowers is an attorney and lifelong Philadelphian. @flowerlady61