Obama for SCOTUS?

If you’ve got a minute–actually, you’ll need quite a few–be sure to read Peter Baker’s profile of Bill Clinton, available here. A quick summary: Bill isn’t fading away in the age of Obama, but he’s not the center of attention anymore, either. He’s only spoken once to Obama since inauguration and isn’t exactly part of Hillary’s daily schedule. But he’s still actually doing quite a bit. At the Clinton Foundation, he presides over an empire of altruism, for which jet-setting isn’t as much a luxury as a maintenace requirement. And at 62, he’s still young! It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Clinton will retain his prominent place in politics for another twenty years. And if he’s got Jimmy Carter’s health, he’ll still be stirring things up longer than that.

The post-presidency, in other words, can be just as consequential as the presidency itself. Long after the debates about Clinton’s Administration will seem stale, the president himself will most likely still be traveling the globe, dispensing aid and good deeds. He came to office young, and left it young, leaving room for a lengthy final chapter.

The same can be said, of course, about President Obama. I know, I know. It’s too early to be thinking about this kind of thing. But consider this: If he’s lucky enough to be reelected, he’ll leave office at the age of 55. Does he really seem like the type to start a foundation of his own? I don’t think so; for one thing, such a career route would too closely resemble Bill’s, whom he clearly is making an effort to distance himself from.

In the dog days of the Obama campaign–in the summer of 07, when things were looking grim, when Hillary was inevitable–one Obama staffer mused to me that perhaps, if things didn’t work out, Barack would settle for a seat on the Supreme Court. “He’s got the resume for it,” said my friend.

Well, that will be only more true in eight years. One president has gone from the White House to the Supreme Court: William Howard Taft, who served in the 1920’s. If you think the prospect of Obama joining him is farcial, watch the interview Obama gave C-SPAN last week. On display is a man who has clearly thought long and hard about the Court–what it can do, what it ought to do. Or read the Times’ play-by-play on how Obama made the Sotomayor selection. As the Times reports, the president was deeply invested in the process:

Mr. Obama, who was president of the law review at Harvard and married a Harvard Law School graduate, recently said he became so engrossed in the memorandums that he missed a basketball game one night.

“He didn’t need a Constitutional Law 101 primer to prepare for this,” said Charles J. Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who spoke with Mr. Obama about the process in early May.

Obama, after all, was a constitutional law professor in his past life–an occupation in which Supreme ambition is common. In his next life, I wouldn’t be surprised if he managed to realize it.