Michelle Cottle is perhaps not responsible for the headline of her New York Times article: The ‘Philly Girl’ Shielding Biden From the Bad News. But she is responsible for writing that “if Mr. Biden is determined to stay in this race, Jilly, as he calls her, is going to have his back,” and not to “expect appeals to the common good to impress her.”

Cottle is responsible for writing this:

Dr. Biden has seen him through enough blows to his spirit. She knows better than perhaps anyone else how public service has kept him going, through the good times and the unimaginably awful ones. After everything the two of them have been through together, she is not the person to nudge him out of the game for the greater good. She may not even be the person to raise the question of his enduring legacy.

Such abstract arguments seem better suited for someone with a bit more emotional distance…

Cottle only allows for one circumstance where the First Lady would advise her husband to end his reelection campaign.

The only argument for Mr. Biden stepping aside that feels as though it might pass muster with his wife is that staying in the race would destroy his health or well-being. In light of how stressful the presidency is and what it clearly has done to him already, that might seem like an obvious assumption.

But even here, Cottle is not inclined to give Dr. Biden much credit, writing “few spouses are cleareyed about the true toll that time is taking on the love of their life.”

I understand the impulse to write this piece. The history of the president’s career and Dr. Biden’s role in it are highly relevant to what happens now. And it’s important to know that the First Lady is a fierce defender of her husband who won’t be bullied by anyone. But it’s completely unwarranted to argue that Dr. Biden is incapable of thinking about the greater good or of having a clear-eyed view of her husband’s capacity to serve four and a half more years in the presidency. As for the headline, it’s not justified by what Cottle wrote, since she didn’t argue that Jill is keeping bad news from Joe. What she wrote is that people shouldn’t expect Jill to make an unblinkered appraisal of the situation and act accordingly. Essentially, Cottle is saying that anyone counting on the First Lady to ask Biden to bow out is going to be disappointed.

My problem isn’t that Cottle makes that prediction, which could well be correct. My problem is that she pretends to know things about the Biden’s relationship that she couldn’t possibly know, and that she is disparaging of Dr. Biden without justification. Maybe we should wait to see what the First Lady before we make absolute determinations about her capabilities?

Here’s what I think we can say with relative certainty. If Biden stays in the race, Jill will defend him with everything she has. What she advises him to do and whether he will follow that advice are unknowable, and reporters shouldn’t pretend otherwise.