Jill Biden spent one of her final moments in the White House writing a message in a fogged-up bathroom mirror. She shares this in her new memoir, “View From The East Wing,” but never says what she wrote. 

This anecdote sums up her book perfectly. 

Released Tuesday, “View From The East Wing” is the former first lady’s account of her time in the White House. Her side of every controversy, every criticism, every hard moment. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal? But Joe took responsibility, and I showed sympathy. Inflation? Don’t you remember how he got us through COVID? Hunter’s addiction? We were a private family and never wanted to air it publicly.

It’s a defense brief dressed up as a memoir. And largely, it feels like Jill Biden never got past the first page of what she actually witnessed.

Instead of telling us how Nancy Pelosi stabbed the family in the back, leaving what was by all accounts an icy relationship, Jill writes about how Biden mended the friendship. When Kamala Harris gave Biden grief over the timing of his endorsement, the former first lady writes that she simply left the room. She even declined to hit back after “Morning Joe” read aloud the criticism Harris had lobbed at the family in her own book.

Jill, it seems, chose to take the high road. 

Everyone hits Jill Biden over not admitting her husband aged beyond the point of being able to serve. But did anyone really expect her to?

No loving wife, no matter how great their political ambitions, would. I certainly didn’t. 

But I did expect the former first lady to dish it out. 

When Kamala Harris wrote her book recapping the 2024 presidential election, she didn’t hold back. Her staff, the Bidens and even her husband Dough Emhoff – everyone got a beating. 

I think Harris was wrong to blame everyone but herself for 2024. But the book was honest, and honesty was probably the best defense she could have offered of her campaign.

Jill Biden’s admissions, by contrast, feel unintentional.

In one part of the book, she notes that she was up early grading some assignments for a college course she was teaching. A staffer texted her and asked her if the president was awake. He needed to jump on a National Security Council call. Hamas had just attacked Israel.

Later, she concedes that Biden was aging. He got tired faster. The gaffes made her flinch. But she thought he was still fit to serve and that voters might not even care either way.

“The optimistic thinking was that enough voters would say, ‘Okay, he’s old, but he’s been doing a good job. There’s a young vice president. If during his second term he gets to the point where he needs to hand over power, the worst-case scenario would still be good,’” the former first lady writes.

If the book was meant to defend her husband and salvage his legacy, it fails.

I say that as someone who is largely sympathetic to the Bidens. I covered the White House during their final year, and what I witnessed was heartbreaking. Biden’s decline was obvious. It was made more obvious by how sharp everyone around him seemed by comparison. Staff, guests, reporters. It was hard to watch. Sometimes I felt angry that those around him would continue to put him through the presidency, let alone a presidential campaign. 

Reading Jill’s book, I found myself wishing she had come out swinging. Whether it was warranted or not, the Democratic Party treated this family badly. She had every right to say so.

There were whispers during that final year, too. Biden staffers occasionally grumbled that the first lady was high-maintenance, that she liked the glitz and glamour that came with the office. It was enough to plant a certain image.

Maybe this book was for her. It clearly wasn’t for the party, or the staff, or the country. Jill Biden is still processing her husband’s cancer diagnosis and still grieving Beau, who they lost to the same disease. Maybe this was just how she needed to work through it.

That’s human. But it doesn’t make for a great memoir.