VIEW FROM THE EAST WING

The former first lady recounts her time in the White House.

“Once you lose a child, nothing can hurt you.” So said Biden in 2019 while her husband geared up for his 2020 presidential run. There are plenty of moments of hurt in her narrative all the same, some minor (a White House staffer violating a norm of successional etiquette between first ladies) and some major (from the death of her stepson Beau and the drug addiction of her stepson Hunter to being removed from her teaching job on the grounds that her work violated emoluments regulations). Biden mentions her husband’s successor by name only a few times, though she gets in a few sharp-elbowed digs (“How to even keep track of all the changes, much less make any sense of them?”). There are a few surprises in Biden’s narrative, including her proffered explanation for President Biden’s disastrous performance at the first presidential debate with Donald Trump (“As we walked off the stage, Joe whispered to me, ‘I really f**ked up, didn’t I?’ ‘Yes, you did,’ I whispered back”), which caused her to wonder if he was having a stroke or had been drugged. Another newsworthy item is her insider’s view of the president’s decision to cede his candidacy to Vice President Kamala Harris (whom, we learn, was brought to President Biden’s attention by Beau during his own time as Harris’ counterpart as Delaware’s attorney general). A couple of bits of dish stand out (Melania Trump comes off as not especially warm), but more interesting are Biden’s observations on what it’s really like to be a woman under constant scrutiny: “Being First Lady could feel like a catch-22. You were encouraged to use your platform to do good, but not to be too aggressive in pursuing policy goals, lest you be seen as overreaching.”

A smart, revealing memoir by a presidential partner of skill and consequence.