She has previously recounted how in 2004, when Mr Biden was under pressure to run for the White House, she was dead set against the idea. So much so that when a group of supporters showed up at their home in Delaware to convince Mr Biden to put himself forward, she walked into the room in nothing but a bikini with “no” written on her stomach.
“That got his attention. I won’t tell you who was sitting in that room, but they got the message,” she told Vogue earlier this year.
Her opinion on the matter changed, however, when George W Bush won re-election in 2004. Such was her disappointment in the result that she wore black for a week. When she finally came out of mourning over the election outcome, she urged her husband to run in 2008.
Grading papers on Air Force Two
As well as championing Mr Biden’s political career, she has been protective over her own: breaking with tradition to continue teaching English full-time at a community college amid her eight years as Second Lady during Barack Obama’s administration, believed to make her the first to hold a paid job while in the role.
“Being a teacher is not what I do but who I am,” she wrote in her 2019 memoir, Where the Light Enters, describing “scrambling into a cocktail dress and heels” in the school bathroom to make it to a White House reception, or grading papers on Air Force Two, with relish.
Dr Biden, who earned four degrees while raising her family, including a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware, said she intends to continue teaching alongside her duties as First Lady if her husband makes it to the White House.
