MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Dr. Jill would never admit it, but she and Melania are more alike than you might think. And in a duel between first ladies, there is only one winner dressed in Valentino.

Dr. Jill Biden may have the cover of Vogue, but Melania Trump just did it better.

Before hosting a successful Republican fundraiser on Monday night (raising $1.4 million), Melania walked around Manhattan in a tight, sleeveless red Valentino dress and six-inch Louboutin heels.

She was alone, but she seemed undeniably happy.

For a woman who communicates primarily through clothes, Melania projected many things at once: strength, defiance, fiery determination and loyalty to her husband’s candidacy.

This, despite not having been seen with the former president since their son, Barron, graduated from high school in May.

Meanwhile, Jill has been busy literally holding her elderly husband, whispering orders in his ear and, most indelibly, dragging him off the CNN debate stage after his disastrous performance, only to drag him to a campaign rally later that same night, speaking to him pitifully.

“Joe, you’ve done a great job!” he said with condescending enthusiasm. “You answered all the questions!”

Melania, by all accounts, never wanted to be first lady. In fact, she is said to have cried on election night in 2020, assuming (along with most of the media and almost all pollsters) that her husband would never win.

Maybe that’s her superpower: Melania doesn’t seem to care about the presidency.

She gives the impression of a woman who knows exactly what kind of man she married, who will not allow herself to be used as a political support and who does not consider fame a source of oxygen.

Jill, on the other hand, has become the Democrats’ new Norma Desmond. She refuses to bow out gracefully and clings desperately to her husband’s power and everything he offers her.

If she weren’t so unpleasant and so cruelly involved in what increasingly seems to be elder abuse (even the ultra-liberal filmmaker Michael Moore said so this week), one might almost feel sorry for her.

What will Dr. Jill do when her husband is no longer president? She has little to offer, no obvious reinvention and no second act. The memoir will undoubtedly be vague, very bright and without force.

So our First Lady is going back to community college, and she recently told Vogue that she doesn’t assign books to her English and writing students, just articles. It’s cheaper and easier, she explains.

What a metaphor for the Biden White House!

And that’s assuming he has time to teach. Elder care is expensive, and the Bidens, as we recently learned, are up to their necks in mortgages. Hunter has mounting legal bills.

Who thinks Jill will be content to nurse a fading husband (eight years her senior, but who looks much older) and live out her days in obscurity, the matriarch of a shameless, sleazy stepson and a deeply troubled daughter?

And what about their friends? The A-list stars who are now fleeing in disgust – the Clooneys, Michael Douglas, Rob Reiner, Stephen King – may never return. The same goes for the millionaire and billionaire donors.

Now the Obamas are reportedly switching sides. A scathing report published Thursday by Politico suggested that George Clooney sought approval from his good friend Barack for his fledgling New York Times op-ed, published Wednesday, calling for Biden to step aside.

Barack, remember, is no die-hard fan. “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to screw things up,” he memorably said of his former vice president in 2020.

This follows an Axios report last month that claimed Michelle Obama, by far the most popular and perhaps most influential Democrat, will not campaign for the Bidens because she is outraged by the family’s treatment of her friend, Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen.

All of the Biden family’s “weird stuff,” as Barack once reportedly called it, may no longer be tolerated.

So of course Jill is going to squeeze every ounce of power and celebrity that is hers as First Lady while she still can.

For now, the country’s security will have to take a distant backseat – anything to avoid what will undoubtedly be a grim life after the White House.

Melania, for her part, has raised Barron – her only son – in almost total privacy and, to her credit, with hardly a trace of scandal.

That said, she certainly made mistakes as First Lady.

That infamous “I really don’t care, do you?” jacket she wore while visiting an immigrant child detention center was hideous, as was the hot pink bow-neck blouse she wore to support her husband in a televised debate following the leak of his “grab her by the p***y” video.

But he seems to have learned his lesson.

We haven’t heard any complaints from Melania’s team about Anna Wintour excluding her from Vogue (unlike her Republican predecessors Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush, all of whom were regally styled and photographed).

There have also been no public complaints about the media’s incessant mockery of her 24-year age difference with Donald, her Slovenian origin story and even her Christmas decorations, while the press gave the Bidens a pass for excluding their infant granddaughter, Navy Joan, from those otherwise carefully hung Christmas stockings.

And Melania gets no credit for being that rarest of political wives: one who has strayed from the playbook.

Hillary Clinton may have supported Bill and helped call his other women “unhinged,” but Melania sat out Trump’s recent trial and conviction for his payments to a porn star to silence them.

Trump reportedly had his affair with Stormy Daniels just four months after Melania gave birth to Barron.

Did you feel humiliated by this summer’s trial? Of course. What woman wouldn’t be?

But Melania is not a victim of anyone.

Before joining Trump for his first term in DC, she reportedly renegotiated their prenuptial agreement.

He is also reported to have noted that if Donald wins in November, he will not be living in the White House.

For all their apparent differences, it seems that Jill and Melania have more in common than differences. Both are strong, formidable women who have sacrificed much of themselves for the outsized ambitions of their husbands and who, some say, are their main advisors.

No less an authority than former Attorney General Bill Barr called Melania “classy” and “smart” in his 2022 memoir, writing that he “always thought she was smarter than the president.”

But while Jill is unwittingly heralding another Trump presidency, Melania seems pretty unconcerned.

At 54, with empty nest syndrome on the way out, one gets the impression she will spend the next four years on her own terms: shopping, dining and lounging by the pool in Palm Beach.

Melania is a kind of Rorschach test, so enigmatic that supporters and detractors can project whatever they want onto her.

What must Jill project onto her predecessor and likely successor? One gets the sense that Melania, married to a rich and powerful man who gives her the freedom and independence she craves, may be enviable.

Melania doesn’t seem to need fame to get attention or validation either. We never see her in the company of celebrities or gloating on social media. There’s dignity in that.

Is your marriage partly transactional? Absolutely. But as the saying goes: when you marry for money, you earn every penny.

Does anyone think Jill married Joe thinking he would just be a low-level civil servant for the rest of his life?

Melania doesn’t need to be First Lady; for Jill, the position has become her identity. How lonely, how terrifying, to now face the life of a debtor’s wife and a disgraced former public servant who forgot the basic premise: it is the American people who hire and fire you, not the other way around.

Melania has no nickname; Jill is now ‘Lady MacBiden’.

Jill’s political obituary, if she doesn’t make the one right decision soon, will surely portray her as the most cowardly First Lady of the modern era.

Melania, on the other hand, may be remembered as the most underrated.