Page 9 of 107 Days

At the vice president’s residence, we’d been given an organizational chart showing how the household was meant to function.

Under the heading “Second Lady,” an arrow pointed to “Family Life,” which turned out to be a euphemism for “housekeeper.” While there were naval enlisted aides who helped with household tasks if I was in the residence, they vanished when I was traveling.

Because it was a secure facility, we were precluded from hiring our own outside help.

If Doug needed laundry done, he had to do it himself or else hide his clothes in my laundry basket and hope that they’d take pity.

Since I’m the cook in the family, I needed to make big batches of food and freeze them for him, so he’d have something decent to eat when I was gone.

After warmly welcoming us into the Biden family at the beginning of the campaign, there seemed to be a change of temperature after the election.

Understandably, after all the tragedy they had endured—Joe’s first wife and daughter killed in a car crash, Beau’s brain cancer, Hunter’s addiction—the Biden family was extraordinarily tight-knit.

I had always admired Jill for her fierce loyalty to her family and also her dedication to teaching.

But I suspect Jill hadn’t quite forgiven me for the 2019 primary debate, when I’d gone hard at Joe over his early opposition to busing.

Although I had regular working lunches with Joe, there wasn’t a lot of family socializing.

So, three years in, when we suddenly received an eleventh-hour invitation for the two of us to join the Biden family celebration at the White House on Fourth of July 2024, it came as a surprise.

We’d planned on being home in Los Angeles, where, for the past three years, we’d used Fourth of July as a chance to thank the Secret Service detail and the local police and first responders who looked after us whenever we were able to be home.

Doug fired up the barbecue, and we personally cooked and served hot dogs for all two hundred of them in our backyard.

July 3 is also Doug’s father’s birthday, a big family occasion.

He was turning eighty-seven, and at that age, every birthday is precious to us.

Because of the sudden request from the Bidens, we had to abruptly change the date for his celebration.

The holiday came after a terrible couple of weeks for Joe.

In his first sit-down television interview after the debate, he told George Stephanopoulos that he couldn’t recall if he’d rewatched it or not.

This was supposed to be the corrective interview that would fix perceptions; instead, it reinforced them.

Then there would be revelations that two radio interviewers had asked him pre-scripted questions provided by his campaign staff.

It wasn’t uncommon for staff to ask interviewers what subjects they would be touching upon, but in his postdebate context it was damning.

The chorus for him to step down would reach a crescendo, with Democratic members of Congress speaking out and celebrities such as George Clooney writing biting op-eds.

The campaign had asked me to call members of Congress to assess support for him.

That made me uneasy. I said I’d call only those I knew well: people who wouldn’t misconstrue the call as some kind of self-serving fishing expedition.

Amid all the chatter, gossip, and malevolence, I never let even those closest to me engage me in the conversation about whether Joe should drop out.

I know how this town works. Information is its most prized capital.

What you know and what you’re prepared to trade are the keys to power.

Everyone is in this swap meet: politicians, lobbyists, the press.

Intentionally or not, word would spread that I was passively gauging their support for me.

And I didn’t want to hear anyone saying to me, You should run .

There was no good way for me to respond to that.

The last thing our ailing campaign needed was rumors of a rift between the president and me.

What I didn’t know then was that some of his senior staff didn’t share that concern.

In their own calls trying to quell the rebellion, they’d been talking me down, saying, If Joe goes, you’ll get her, strongly implying that I wasn’t up to it.

It was just one of the many ways his staff was responding badly to the crisis.

They’d started cramming his schedule with more events, knowing full well that when he was tired, he did poorly.

Hunter Biden’s trial was underway, and I suppose the campaign wanted to distract from that and wanted Joe to be seen as functioning vigorously as president despite the personal burden he was carrying.

Instead, they were exhausting him. Whose idea was it to have him stand in the broiling sun at a Juneteenth celebration for three hours until, worn out, he was described as “comatose”?

Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity.

Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president.

On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best.

But at eighty-one, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser.

I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.

What I do know is that he needed rest, and you’re not going to get it during a presidential campaign.

They don’t call it “running for office” for nothing.

Any campaign is a full sprint. A presidential race is sprinting through a marathon.

Like a marathon, it is a test of endurance.

Unlike a marathon, tomatoes are being thrown at you every step of the way.

There was a distinction between his ability to campaign and his ability to govern.

I was right beside him as he navigated successfully through intensely dangerous world events: Putin’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons on the Ukraine battlefront; the missile exchanges between Iran and Israel that might have escalated into regional war if we hadn’t rallied the diverse coalition that protected Israel during those attacks.

His judgment, his experience, and the relationships he had developed were expertly deployed.

As for campaigning, I did have concerns.

His voice was no longer strong, his verbal stumbles more frequent.

Apart from the superhuman stamina required, communicating is the main game.

Before he stepped aside from the top of the ticket, I had planned to do many of the big public rallies and a lot of the crazy travel while his team fashioned a White House–based campaign for him.

Even so, his inner circle, the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far, and that in its rigors, he’d be perpetually, increasingly, unavoidably exhausted.

They should have counseled him accordingly.

Instead, it seemed that the worse things got, the more they pushed him.

And the more they pushed, the faster and more visibly his energy seemed to drain.

I had never, in three and a half years at the White House, in the Oval Office or the Situation Room, witnessed anything remotely like the level of confusion, incoherence, and debility we saw on the debate stage.

When Doug and I arrived at the White House on July 4, I greeted Joe with our usual hug. He felt so frail. One of the staff drew Doug aside. The First Lady wanted to speak with him. He was led to the Blue Room, where Jill Biden was standing alone. She seemed tense, even angry.

“What’s going on?” she demanded. “Are you supporting us?”

Of course, Doug said. Of course we are supporting you.

“Okay. That’s really important. We need to know that.”

When I joined him, Doug was wearing a grim expression. Doug runs cool. He’s slow to anger. But I could tell something had gotten to him.

Later, he unloaded. “They hide you away for four years, give you impossible, shit jobs, don’t correct the record when those tasks are mischaracterized, never fight back when you’re attacked, never praise your accomplishments, and now, finally, they want you out there on that balcony, standing right beside them.

Now, finally, they know you are an asset, and they need you to reassure the American people.

“And still, they have to ask if we’re loyal?”