Michelle says this makes her smile.  I’m just glad that Joe Biden chose irrelevance rather than bring his partitioning-Iraq schemes to Foggy Bottom.  A man’s got to know his limitations:

During the taping of the Oprah Winfrey show today, Dr. Jill Biden said that her husband, the vice president-elect, was given a choice of being either vice president or secretary of State.

This revelation came after Vice President-elect Joe Biden told Oprah that after then-Sen. Obama offered the job of VP he asked for some time to think about it and talk it over with his family.

Mrs. Biden interjected: “Joe had the choice of being secretary of State or vice president.” She then seemed to realize she’d said something she wasn’t supposed to have said.

Her husband laughed.

Honestly, though, this says a lot about Joe Biden.  He had the opportunity to play a key role in Barack Obama’s Cabinet, in his supposed specialty.  All he had to do was choose that rather than serve in a mostly-meaningless role.  Biden chose to be mostly meaningless.

On the other hand, it does give a different twist to Biden’s admission on the campaign trail that Hillary Clinton would have been the better choice.  Maybe he was talking about both jobs.

Update (AP): If Biden had chosen SoS, who would have been the pick for VP?

Update (Ed): Could he have gotten it wrong twice in a row?  I’d say Hillary would have been the inevitable choice, but it could have been Bill Richardson — and think about where we would have been now.