“I think the Bidens know that the affection they show for each other serves as a cure,” said Dr. Douglas Brinkley, professor at Rice University and presidential historian.
“New presidents and first ladies need to be empathetic,” he explained, and the Bidens’ PDA is only part of the efforts of the first couple to meet that institutional commitment.
‘If we look [first couples] together we don’t want to feel tension in their marriage, ”Brinkley said. “We don’t want to feel like they like being separated from each other. People want to believe that there is some harmony and deep respect. “
Coincidental displays of affection weren’t always so common for first couples. According to Dr. Barbara Perry, director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia Miller Center, it was the sexual revolution of the 1960s that redefined the standards for how all Americans – including commander-in-chief – could communicate publicly with their husbands.
After Richard Nixon stepped down as president in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Gerald and Betty Ford became the first of the first couples to fully embrace the concept of PDA following those societal changes, Perry said.
The Fords made their affection for each other known from day one on August 9, 1974, as they accompanied the departing Nixons through an elaborate White House farewell ceremony that brought great relief to the two relations.
As they walked a red carpet on the South Lawn, Gerald and Betty Ford were trapped arm in arm with First Lady Pat Nixon. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon – somewhat removed from the group – walked untethered to the presidential helicopter that would take him home to California.
The Fords “were together, of course,” and “just seemed so happy” during their brief two-and-a-half years at the White House, Perry said. Not only were they taxed less as a result of the cultural advances of the 1960s; they also benefited from following the Nixons, who called Perry “the cold pair winner” among modern presidential couples.
But perhaps more importantly, Gerald Ford had never pursued such ambitious political heights. Ford, a former House minority leader, was not elected president – elevated first to vice president after Spiro Agnew’s resignation, then to the Oval Office when Nixon stepped down.
“They were never in the national, white-hot spotlight,” Perry said of the Fords. “So they felt comfortable doing what they had always done.”
Subsequent presidents and first ladies showed love for each other in their own way – including Ronald’s love letters to Nancy Reagan, who Perry considers the most affectionate of the modern first couples.
Baby boomers, a generation far less impressed with PDA than their ancestors, got entry to the White House in the form of Bill and Hillary Clinton. But their marriage, shaken by the Lewinsky affair in the mid-1990s, marked a major turning point in the history of the presidential PDA, as millions of Americans began scrutinizing the first couple’s movements for signs of insincerity.
While the public had not learned of previous presidents’ marital troubles until well after their departure, Perry noted that the Clintons are “ the first couple, and he the first president, whom we know in real time, while he is president, is lost. . from his marriage. And so it is so difficult for them to know what is real and what artifice is. “
Since Bill and Hillary Clinton, the presidency has seen a string of first couples – George W. and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle Obama, and Joe and Jill Biden – demonstrate that American culture has “ gone beyond all the taboos ” that used to be associated with each other with PDA, Perry said.
The glaring exception is the previous first couple, Donald and Melania Trump, whose icy public meetings interrupted PDA’s otherwise natural integration into day-to-day presidential behavior.
In this sense, the Bidens’ displays of affection seem somewhat strange after the past four years, even though they represent yet another return to the standards of past governments that the new president repeatedly pledged to rehabilitate on the campaign trail.
It’s reassuring. It is warm. It’s real, ”Perry said. And so if you put the Covid issue, our divided country, in a layer [and] the violence in our country on the contrast with the Trumps, it just symbolizes everything. “