[ad_1]
“I’m Jill Biden’s husband.” This is how Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate of the United States, often presents himself in his speeches. And this is the description you use in yours official Twitter account – plus, of course, the US president elect, who added a week ago when he won the election, defeating Donald Trump.
Jill Biden, although publicly discreet – more discreet in the past, with more intervention lately – has a strong personal, but also political, influence on her husband. He is your advisor, confidant, and helps you make decisions as important as choosing Kamala Harris for vice presidency.
Now that Joe Biden has arrived at the White House, Jill Biden is about to stand out.
The new first lady could make history if she keeps her full-time job as a university English teacher. This is the will you have expressed.
If that happens, Jill Biden will “forever change the expectations and limits” of this role, believes Kate Andersen Brower, author of a book on the history of American first ladies, quoted by the France-Presse (AFP) agency.
How did Jill Biden get here
Jill Tracy Jacobs was born in 1951, is 69 and comes from a middle-class family with roots in Pennsylvania. The father worked in a bank and the mother was a maid. She is the eldest of five sisters.
Jill and Joe Biden met in 1975 with the help of Joe Biden’s brother Frank. The day of the first meeting, Joe went to pick her up at home, Jill looked at him, in a suit and tie and thought, “I’m glad it’s just a date,” says The New York Times.
Eventually she was surprised and when she got home she enthusiastically called her mother to tell her she had finally met a “gentleman,” says Vogue.
However, it took five marriage proposals for Joe to get a “yes”.
Jill had already been married, at the age of 20, to a former college football player. But the marriage only lasted four years.
Furthermore, marriage to Joe Biden would also involve taking on the role of caregiver for his two children.
Joe Biden was also married, but in 1972 his family experienced a tragedy. A few weeks after she was elected a senator from Delaware, her wife, Neilia Hunter, and one-year-old daughter died in a serious car accident. The other two children, Beau and Hunter, were injured but survived.
Five years later, the children, ages eight and nine, fully supported the relationship between their father and Jill. “He gave me back my life,” Joe wrote in his memoir, quoted by AFP. Beau and Hunter began to treat Jill like their mother.
In 1981, the couple had a daughter, Ashley. Meanwhile, the family has grown, the children have married, and Joe and Jill now have five grandchildren.
But in 2015 the family experienced a new moment of mourning. Beau Biden died of cancer at the age of 46. Beau was a lawyer, attorney general in the state of Delaware and served in the military in Iraq.
At the time, Jill played an essential role in Joe Biden’s recovery, taking on the role of confidant Beau had hitherto occupied, friends told The Washington Post.
“Being a teacher is not just what I do, it’s who I am”
Known as Dr. Jill Biden, this is, by the way, the name he uses in her official Twitter account -, the now first lady has a degree, two master’s degrees and a doctorate in pedagogy.
Jill Biden has over 40 years of experience as a teacher. He has taught in high school, a psychiatric hospital for teens and a university in Delaware.
“Being a teacher isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am,” she wrote in a memoir. She only interrupted her career for two years when she was a mother, in 1981, having stayed home to take care of her children.
While Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president between 2009 and 2017, Jill took over as “second lady”, as the Americans call her. She was expected to accompany her husband on official trips and take an active role in some causes, along with the First Lady.
Jill was performing this function. He worked to raise awareness of breast cancer prevention, devoted himself to educational issues, and created, with Michelle Obama, Joining Forces, an organization to support American military families.
However, she made history at the time, being the first female vice president to keep her full-time job, in this case as a teacher.
Michelle Obama and some members of the Obama administration team recall that Jill Biden always carried student work with her to correct, including air travel for official overseas visits, the Washington Post says.
The paper also recalls an episode in which Jill asked the dean of the university where she taught to leave early because Joe Biden was waiting for him on Air Force Two (the vice president’s transport plane) for a trip to Latin America. “Well, considering the plane is ready on the runway and using fuel, let’s go,” says Jim McClellan.
The first stop since 1981
“How does a broken family come together? In the same way a nation is united. With love and understanding. And with small gestures of compassion. With courage. With unshakable faith ”. This was one of Jill Biden’s strongest statements in her testimony supporting Joe Biden’s confirmation as a Democratic candidate for the presidential election, at the party’s national convention on August 18 this year.
“You can understand why she is the love of my life and the pillar of our family,” said the then candidate. “She is the strongest person I know”.
Image from the video broadcast online on the second day of the Democratic National Convention, August 18, 2020. In the video, Jill Biden makes her speech in support of her husband’s candidacy as a Democratic candidate in the US presidential election. credits: EPA / DNCC “data-title =” A 21st century first lady. Jill Biden wants to continue teaching and that gives her a place in history – SAPO 24 “>
This is the first time he has quit his job since 1981. According to college colleague Jim McClellan, Jill Biden said he “would regret not doing more if he didn’t do his best and the election result wouldn’t be. been favorable for her husband “.
In these elections, Jill Biden took a much more active role than the two previous times in which the now-elected president ran for president, in 1988 and 2008: he was involved in the primary, represented Joe Biden in the actions of campaign across the country and influenced Kamala Harris’ choice as vice president.
Known for her empathic and diplomatic profile, she is sometimes praised by opponents. Lindsey Graham, Republican senator and ally of Donald Trump, for example, publicly highlighted Jill Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention: “He is an extraordinary person who leads a very meaningful life.”
Jane Sanders, wife of Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden’s opponent in the Democratic primary, also showed her admiration for Jill Biden.
“To me he is a very good human being and a person who lives by the principle ‘treat others as you want to be treated,'” said Jane Sanders, quoted by the Washington Post. Bernie Sanders’ wife, who is also involved in education, hopes to be able to work with Jill Biden on topics such as the heavy debt students have to incur to get a degree in the United States.
“You know,” Jane Sanders said to her husband one day, “I would vote for you as president, but I think I would vote for Jill as first lady, if there was that option,” says the Washington Post.
A 21st century first lady: what to expect from Jill Biden in the White House
Jill Biden will be the first woman to continue her professional career while her husband sits in the chair.
Although she is not the first lady connected to the world of education, she is the first to express a desire to keep her job and to continue teaching.
Jill Biden teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College, a university in Northern Virginia near Washington.
In addition to her teaching career, Jill Biden is expected to take a more active political role than Melania Trump, wife of four-year president Donald Trump.
The new first lady has already said she intends to continue the work she did when her husband was vice president. He wants to devote himself to the causes of education, raising awareness for breast cancer prevention and working with military families, in the Joining Forces organization.
[ad_2]
Source link
