“I think the Bidens know that the affection they show for each other is a cure,” said Dr. Douglas Brinkley, the professor and presidential historian of Rice University, said.
“New presidents and first ladies must be empathetic,” he explained, and Bidens’ PDA is just one part of the first couple’s effort to meet this institutional requirement.
‘If we look [first couples] together we do not want to experience tension in their marriage, ”Brinkley said. ‘We do not want to feel that they enjoy being separated from each other. “One wants to believe that there is a degree of harmony and deep respect there.”
Casual love display was not always so common for first couples. According to Dr. Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia, it was the sexual revolution of the 1960s that redefined standards for how all Americans – including commander-in-chief – could communicate with their spouses in public.
After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency following the Watergate scandal, Gerald and Betty Ford became the first of the first couples to fully embrace the concept of PDA following the societal changes, Perry said.
The Fords made their love for each other known from day one on August 9, 1974, when they accompanied the retiring Nixons during an extended farewell ceremony in the White House that brought the two relationships into serious relief.
As they rolled down a red carpet on the South Lawn, Gerald and Betty Ford were locked arm-in-arm with First Lady Pat Nixon. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon – slightly removed from the group – walked unbound in the direction of the presidential helicopter that was to take him to California.
The Fords ‘were, of course, together’ and ‘looked just as happy’ in their short two-and-a-half years in the White House, Perry said. Not only were they left less burdened due to cultural advances from the 60s era; they also benefited from following the Nixons, who Perry called “the winner of the cold couple award” among modern presidential matings.
More importantly, though, Gerald Ford has never pursued such ambitious political heights. Ford, a former House minority leader, was not elected president – first elevated to vice-presidency following the resignation of Spiro Agnew and 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 always did.”
Subsequent presidents and first ladies showed their love for each other in their own way – including Ronald’s love letters to Nancy Reagan, which Perry considers the most affectionate of modern first couples.
Baby Boomers, a generation much less fascinated by PDAs than their ancestors, gained access to the White House in the form of Bill and Hillary Clinton. But their marriage, which was shaken by the Lewinsky affair in the mid-1990s, was a major turning point in the history of the PDA, while millions of Americans began investigating the movements of the first couple for signs of dishonesty.
While the public only heard good news about the marriage of former presidents after they left office, Perry noted that the Clintons’ is the first couple, and he is the first president, that we know in real time while he is president, that he had strayed. from his marriage. And that’s why it’s so hard for them to know what’s genuine and what’s artificial. ”
Since Bill and Hillary Clinton, the presidency has seen a series of first couples – George W. and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle Obama, and Joe and Jill Biden – demonstrating that American culture is ‘beyond all the taboos’ previously associated . with PDA, Perry said.
The shining exception is the previous first couple, Donald and Melania Trump, whose icy public encounters disrupted the natural integration of PDAs into everyday presidential behavior.
In that respect, Bidens’ refuge after the past four years seems somewhat strange, although it is a return to the norms of previous administrations that the new president has repeatedly promised to rehabilitate on the campaign.
“It’s comforting. It’s hot. It’s real, ”Perry said. ‘And if you make the Covid issue low, our divided country is [and] the violence in our country unlike the Trumps, it symbolizes everything. ‘