Finally! Does this mean we get a chance to finally debate Jill Biden’s role in propping up a clearly doddering president? Ask whether she’s the power behind the drone? Perhaps complete with a classic literary reference about women who use husbands to wield power?

Er … no, Politico doesn’t ask those questions. And call her Dr. Jill, you misogynist!

But if the topic is Casey DeSantis, suddenly all bets are off, right up to the classic literary reference of — well, read it yourself:

For nearly as long, too, though, others who have worked with her or around her have nodded more quietly to the downsides of the starring part that she plays. She is and always has been by far his most important adviser, they say, because she is hesitant to cede that space to nearly anybody else. The DeSantis inner circle is too small and remains so, they say, not only because he constitutionally doesn’t trust people but because she doesn’t either. Especially forthright are the people who are granted anonymity on account of their fear of retribution given their power — not just his but hers. “She’s the power behind the throne,” a Republican lobbyist told me. “The tip of the spear,” said a Republican consultant. She is, they say, in the middle of good decisions of his, but bad ones, too. One in particular during the first year of his administration struck many then as a shortsighted miscalculation and looks to them now like a possibly fatal mistake — the ouster of Susie Wiles, the well-respected operative who had helped former President Donald Trump win Florida in 2016, and then helped DeSantis, 44, get elected governor in 2018 but now is running Donald Trump’s rival White House bid.

“Have you ever noticed,” Roger Stone, the notorious political mischief-maker who is both a DeSantis antagonist and a many-decades-long Trump loyalist, remarked in a Telegram post last fall, “how much Ron DeSantis’ wife Casey is like Lady Macbeth?” — an agent, in other words, of her husband’s undoing.

Soooo … now Roger Stone is a reliable source for analysis for Politico? The same Roger Stone who has been a loyal ally of Donald Trump, who found himself in legal hot water and whom Trump pardoned after a commutation to keep out of prison? That’s their choice for providing insight into the DeSantis marriage and their political fortunes?

Nor is the Lady MacBeth line the only hint of condescension to the feminine in Michael Kruse’s ‘profile.’ Check out how the second paragraph starts, emphasis mine (and notice that it’s the longest sentence in modern journalism):

  “That’s a good question,” she cooed, thanking the head of the state Republican Party for having them and for convening this scripted Q&A, before launching into a 3 ½-minute stump speech of an answer — in which she called her husband a fighter and “a good dad” and “a good person” and “really the embodiment of the American dream,” tracing his biography from Jacksonville in Northeast Florida to Dunedin in the Tampa Bay area to Yale College to Harvard Law to joining the Navy and becoming a judge advocate general and then going to Iraq and then getting elected to Congress and then getting elected to be the governor of “the third-largest state in the country and now the 13th-largest economy in the world” and at some point the crowd found a place to applaud and she had a chance to take a breath.

“Cooed”? Seriously?

And as for speaking for three and a half minutes without taking a breath, perhaps Kruse and his editors can explain his use of a 143 words in a single sentence that meanders through her speech. Or at the very least, diagram that sentence for readers. If you comment on launching a long answer, perhaps employing brevity and succintness in the criticism would help.

The tone of this piece on the DeSantises differs greatly from a piece less than three weeks ago at Politico, which attempted to paint Jill Biden as Joe’s “gut check” in deciding to run for a second term. Eugene Daniels makes no mention of Lady MacBeth in that profile of a political spouse. The word “cooed” is not used at all, notably. Instead, Jill Biden’s engagement on matters of policy and protocol are painted as entirely worthy and selfless. Daniels does pull out the same “secret weapon” term as Kruse does, but far more positively:

Her gentle encouragement of her husband’s reelection run comes as she’s relishing her role, hanging out at the Super Bowl and the women’s Final Four, and actively posting on social media. Unlike the cliche applied to wives of major political figures — that they’re the “secret weapon” behind their husband’s success — there’s nothing that secret about the role she is playing.

So Jill is “relishing her role” and “involved in all the high-level discussions” about a re-election decision, according to Politico. However, Casey is “uncommonly involved,” “the power behind the throne,” and people around them “fear [her] retribution” …  also according to Politico. Riiiiiight.

Standards! If Politico didn’t have two of them, they wouldn’t have any.

The real issue here isn’t so much this hit piece on Casey DeSantis as it is the covering for Joe Biden in the gauzy coverage of Jill. Ron DeSantis may rely on his wife for advice and consultation, but Joe Biden appears to be relying on Jill for basic cognitive support. He has repeatedly found himself lost on stage and elsewhere, and either Jill or an aide has to come to his assistance. Such as today in Japan, for instance:

After shaking Kishida’s hand, Biden, 80, turned his attention to the prime minister’s 58-year-old wife, Fumio Kishida — bizarrely bending over with clenched fists, as if in a boxer’s pose, before also shaking her hand.

Kishida, 65, then began leading the US dignitaries to prearranged spots to pose for photos — eventually jumping in to politely guide Biden to his place as the president shuffled slowly over and looked at the ground in clear confusion as to where he was supposed to stand.

“We’ll figure it out,” the first lady joked as she and their hosts patiently waited for the aging commander-in-chief to work out where he should stand.

Good Lord.

Yet the media, despite all sorts of video and other evidence, refuses to drill into the issue of Biden’s basic competence and whether Jill is the de facto president. The Lady MacBeth analogy seems much better suited for her than Casey DeSantis.

Instead, the media coos at the Bidens, while trying to wring the damned spot of corruption from their hands as they circle the wagons around them.