James Morrow: First Lady is swiftly becoming the last resort

The First Lady is committing what increasingly looks to be an act of elder abuse in pushing her husband to stay in the presidential race — plus putting the security of the West in jeopardy, writes James Morrow.

Sometimes it is the little details that are the most telling.

Did you know that First Lady Jill Biden used to have her own walk-on music to be played whenever she entered an event, much like Hail to the Chief is played for her husband?

Washington journalist T. Beckett Adams broke the story in 2022, back when it was the sort of item that might feature at your local pub trivia’s US politics round on a slow night.

Adams reported that in 2021, Mrs Biden’s office instructed the ceremonial US Marine Band to come up with a tune they could fire up whenever she took the stage.

The piece was a first. Never before had a first lady asked for her own official “theme song”, to be played by the official US Marine Band.

First Lady Jill Biden on stage with President Joe Biden.

What the band came up with was bizarre – a bleating, blatting trumpet number that sounded like a Year 6 brass ensemble warming up.

Much to the relief of the Marine players, the work was quickly shelved once Adams started asking questions about it, threatening to out the First Lady’s sense of self-importance.

Yet seen in the context of the past week, the brief episode of what was known as “Fanfare for the First Lady” looks increasingly like a piece of foreshadowing.

Behind the scenes, as Democrats melt down about their candidate’s debate performance last week and the fact they can no longer gaslight voters about the President’s condition, Mrs Biden is said to increasingly have “main character syndrome”.

Not only is she in love with the trappings of office, but Mrs Biden increasingly sees herself as the Democrats’ co-candidate for 2024.

Thus the recent images of her swanning around fundraisers in the Hamptons and ditching her husband to chat up Emmanuel Macron at a D-Day state dinner in France.

This sense of entitlement was also on display on Monday as the latest edition of American Vogue hit the stands, with Mrs Biden on the cover in a white Ralph Lauren coat dress saying: “We will decide our future.”

Inside, the profile opens thusly: “If  you want to know what power feels like, try to get yourself driven around in a motorcade.”

The author of the piece gushes: “Flashing police chaperone lights form a perimeter as you blaze down an empty highway, waiting cars backed up on entry ramps as you pass … rules don’t apply.”

Is it any wonder that Jill Biden – and the rest of the Biden family, which contains more than its fair share of grifters – reportedly urged the President to stay in the race when they gathered at Camp David this past weekend?

As a last-minute note added to the online version of the Vogue profile put it, Mrs Biden told the magazine: “We would not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president … we will continue to fight.”

And why wouldn’t they?

After all, once out of office, Mrs Biden may still get a Secret Service detail when she goes to the supermarket, but that’s about it as far as the trappings of power will go.

No wonder she wouldn’t let her husband recover from last week’s debate debacle in private, instead offering utterly clueless encouragement in front of the cameras shortly after.

“You did such a great job!” she shrieked in front of a crowd of rattled supporters.

“You answered every question!”

Three more stars on his Big Boy President chart and Mr Biden gets an ice cream, presumably.

Stories have also emerged about the extent to which Mrs Biden has controlled access to the President, using a small in-group of advisers to shield even fellow White House staffers from knowing the true extent of the commander-in-chief’s failings.

It goes without saying that this is a terrible state of affairs.

The list of global crises that could kick off at any moment would fill this page three times over, yet Mr Biden is increasingly compromised and said to be only “at his best” between 10am and 4pm for what is a 24-hour-a-day job.

At the same time, the First Lady is running a routine that runs somewhere between Madame Mao and Edith Wilson, whom it later turned out all but ran the country after her husband, then-president Woodrow Wilson, had a stroke in 1919.

Not only is the First Lady committing what increasingly looks to be an act of elder abuse in pushing her husband to stay in office and in the race, with six months to go until Inauguration Day, she is also putting the security of the West in jeopardy.