#Joe Biden needs a vice president who won’t try to steal his job

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Joe Biden speaks with small business owners in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
AP Photo/Matt Slocum

Joe Biden is 112 years old and can barely speak a coherent sentence. So it matters greatly whom he picks to be his running mate. The chances that his veep selection might end up becoming president during his term can’t be discounted.

Democrats have spent the Trump years talking about the virtues of the 25th Amendment. It lays out a process inside the executive branch that would temporarily and, if necessary, permanently replace a living president deemed by his Cabinet to be too infirm to serve as the most powerful man in the world.

It was never going to happen: President Trump’s own aggressiveness, and his deep bond with his voters, made any such notion unthinkable outside the fever swamps of cable news.

Still, there’s no question Democrats and liberals have softened the ground when it comes to the idea of invoking the 25th. Now think of Biden’s position. Except for a few weeks of trouble, he basically coasted into the nomination and is likely to try and coast into the presidency. He hasn’t ­engaged the passions of his party, and there isn’t a Biden “wing” to speak of.

Moreover, let’s face it, he does seem a tad impaired. In one of his recent YouTube ads, he literally speaks these words: “I’m coming to you for ask a quick favor.” For ask a quick favor? If this is the take his people used, can you imagine what the other, rejected takes were like?

So how safe from the 25th would Biden be from a party, a Cabinet and a Democratic Congress thrilled to have beaten Trump but neither afraid nor respectful of Uncle Joe? Would the Democrats who want to foment a cultural revolution not feel tempted to hasten the change by ditching the figurehead through the 25th and going with a more ideologically simpatico veep?

If you want an America more in line with the views expressed by the 1619 Project and the rioters and those who think it’s fine to pull down a statue of George Washington, wouldn’t President Stacey Abrams get you there faster?

Conventional opinion has ­already come to regard Kamala Harris as the right choice, but like Shakespeare’s Cassius, she hath a lean and hungry look — and ­remember, it was Cassius who ­fomented the plot against Julius Caesar.

If Biden only seems, but isn’t ­really, gaga, he should pick a veep who will either be surpassingly loyal to him or who doesn’t especially crave being president herself.

One way to get a loyalist is to ­elevate someone somewhat obscure who really will therefore owe everything to him for making her a historical figure — like New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Or Florida Rep. Val Demings.

But in the category of the person who probably doesn’t want to become president but certainly would want to do everything in her power to get Trump out of ­office, there is one perfect choice. Indeed, in all respects, she’d be the perfect choice — including the fact that she probably doesn’t want to do it.

She is beloved among Democrats, among women, among African Americans. She’s written one of the best-selling books of the century and is one of the most famous people in America. She’s been thoroughly vetted. Her choice would be a national sensation, and it would drive Trump crazy.

Michelle Obama, come on down!

You might ask why she’d agree. We know she’s pretty private. But in truth, she’d be able to define the vice presidency however she liked. She has served in a largely ceremonial position before and made the most of it.

You might ask whether Biden would not wish to consider her selection. It might seem as though he couldn’t do anything without an Obama to ballast him. And it does raise the specter of a dynastic element in American politics that helped sink both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Eh, dynasty shmynasty. The goal here is to win on Election Day — and survive attempts to depose him as a doddering fool. If he could talk her into doing it, Biden should pick Michelle Obama. End of story. Old Uncle Joe just needs to say to her: “I’m coming to you for ask a quick favor.”

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