WASHINGTON — The first Black woman on the Supreme Court is justice delayed, and President Joe Biden — and the nominee — has the historical burden of presenting the perfect pick to the nation.

I think I know who that woman would be. Someone Biden sees often and knows well: Vice President Kamala Harris. The high court matches her lawyerly skills. Her job now exposes a struggle to get up to speed after more than a year in office.

The fortress across First Street from the Capitol needs another woman like Harris to shake it up. It’s a co-equal branch of government where she could make more of a difference. Joining the right-wing John Roberts Court, Harris could shore up a three-woman line of Democratic defense, bringing some star power to that dark temple. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the Court more visible with her wise dissents and a persona that became a cause celebre.

You hear it all the time: we need a justice who’s won an election, like the great Chief Justice Earl Warren, governor of California. We need a justice that comes from west of the Mississippi River. And we really need another justice that didn’t go to Harvard or Yale.

Harris fits all those bills and brings the diversity of a Howard University degree, the historically Black college in the District of Columbia. That is a distinction, a life experience that her peers Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, products of the all-male, Catholic “Prep” and of Ivy League law schools, sorely lack.

Senate confirmation would likely be smoother for a former colleague.

Plainly put in realpolitik, the idea of Harris becoming president if anything befalls the president, 79, is no comfort. These are times that try our souls. Her groundbreaking place on the 2020 ticket thrilled Democrats, the Black community and beyond — as kind of a second coming of former President Barack Obama. But she hasn’t bonded with the American people with that extraordinary sweeping grace.

Hear me out.

The freshman senator had to bail out of her presidential campaign before Iowa. Her prosecutor demeanor was not a natural to win voters. Even with a bright smile, she’s not one to shoot the breeze with easy camaraderie on the trail or in the Senate, as Biden always loved to do.

The president is an exuberant extrovert. Coolly reserved, Harris might enjoy a more cloistered form of public service. She’d be a formidable fencing foe for the Trump Three: arrogant Gorsuch, beer-drinking Kavanaugh and prim Amy Coney Barrett.

She’d have long summers off to travel or hang out in her Brentwood home, without the press glare that’s on her now.

The way Harris made a mark as a California senator — sharply questioning Supreme Court and attorney general nominees — would serve her well on the bench. Former President Donald Trump’s nominees, such as Southerner Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, were flustered when they were put on the spot by Harris’ pointed digs.

Biden proposing Harris clears a better field for both. Frankly, it’s no secret here Harris has yet to prove herself. She failed to achieve the big job she asked for: passing voting rights in Congress. She’s made a few goofs as a foreign policy rookie. Now NATO forces are confronting Russia over Ukraine.

Nothing in her background prepared her for such high stakes, though she is traveling to Munich this week to meet with NATO allies.

“Go home,” was her terse takeaway to immigrants when she visited the Southern border. Adept diplomacy is a practiced art.

Biden declared Harris as his 2024 running mate. However, note Obama didn’t back his own vice president, Biden, in 2016. Cut loose himself, Biden might feel free to make a change in the political winds.

At least three superb judges are serious contenders. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the House majority whip who rescued Biden’s candidacy, is pushing hard for a South Carolinian, J. Michelle Childs.

Like the old school Chicago code: “You do something for someone, they do something for you.”

That works in Washington, too. Hey, it was just a suggestion.

Jamie Stiehm may be reached at JamieStiehm.com.

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