He could have had Hillary, instead he did the egotistical thing and picked a dullard who’d make him look that much better by comparison. As Tom Maguire once said, they told me if I voted for McCain we’d have a moron as VP — and they were right! Enjoy the next three years, Barry.

President Obama is so “distracted by his vice president’s indiscipline” that he has been forced to rebuke privately Vice President Joe Biden, according to a new book by Newsweek journalist Richard Wolffe, who interviewed Obama a dozen times…

As evidence, Wolffe reports that during the presidential transition period, Biden insulted Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s closest friends and confidantes. Jarrett had been considered Obama’s top choice to fill his vacated Senate seat in Illinois, but took herself out of the running just hours after Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich allegedly told a wiretapped conference call he would not heed any Obama recommendation without a payoff.

“Soon after Jarrett pulled out of consideration for the Senate seat, the senior transition team met to discuss cabinet picks,” Wolffe writes. “Biden tried to compliment Jarrett after one contribution. ‘You should be in the Senate,’ he quipped. After the meeting, as everyone returned to their offices, Obama stopped Biden to warn him not to say anything like that again. ‘It’s not funny,’ he told him.”

As goofy as he is, has Biden said anything that’s really hurt Obama — yet? There were campaign gaffes aplenty, most memorably his prediction about how The One’s inexperience would invite a challenge from some enemy state early on, but the only major stinkbomb I can think of since the inauguration was his panic attack about swine flu on the subways. He’s eased comfortably into the Quayle role: Doing no real harm, sporadically providing material for late-night comics, and by his mere existence encouraging people to pray fervently for the continued good health of the president. Exit question: Dump him for Hillary in 2012? Naaah.

Update: Someone in the comments suggests Claire McCaskill for VP in 2012. You know, that’s a heck of an idea.