Ready For Anything

Dr. Jill Biden is many things: a writing professor, a grandmother, a former Second Lady, and a stalwart defender of her husband, Joe. She’s also facing the hardest campaign of her life. Jonathan Van Meter reports.

- Jonathan Van Meter

It’s the day after Joe Biden finally announces he’s running for president, and I am with Dr. Jill Biden and her grandkids at their summer home: a rambling, three-story Colonial painted the color of just washed denim. Nestled among scrubby pines on a tiny cul-de-sac in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, it’s a relatively new house, but designed to look like it’s been there for decades—just like the Bidens’ home in Wilmington, which Joe designed himself and which has a kind of lowkey, baronial splendor. (“Looks old, works like new!” could very well be the theme of Biden’s campaign—if slogans were brutally honest.) Two very mellow and very large German shepherds, Champ and Major, are asleep on the floor. Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy, Natalie, and Hunter (25, 20, 18, 14, and 13 respectively), still toweling off from a downpour they all just got caught in on the beach, are tearing into a pile of cheesesteaks. Amid this tableau—one that has all the markers of a Ralph Lauren ad—stands Jill, in black slacks and sandals, with a sweater pulled over a navy button-down. She, too, got drenched and is fussing with her hair. When I tell her she looks great, she says, “You should’ve seen me an hour ago,” and cracks up.