Obama Back In The White House: Former Deputy Solicitor General Suggests 'Hail Mary' To Save Biden's Flagging 2024 Campaign

"Biden might rescue his faltering hope of reelection in one seemingly impossible way — asking the highly popular, former President Barack Obama to step in to replace Harris on the 2024 ticket," he suggested.

As Lacovara points out, this is hardly a new idea. The notion was floated in the heady days of 2015 when Biden's potential VP choice was still up in the air, only to land in the equally, if differently unsteady hands of then-Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA).

The Watergate special prosecutor and former President of the Washington DC Bar Association argues that under an extremely narrow interpretation of the 12th, 22nd, and 25th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the former president could be nominated as vice president because he wouldn't be "elected to the office of President," as specified in the precise wording of the 22nd Amendment. Indeed, he would only be "elected" as vice president and should he serve in Biden's incapacity or untimely demise the presidency would devolve to him in a legally distinct process.

Thus Lacovara makes the claim that Obama not only could but should be tapped by Biden to serve as vice president in a second term. He added that the former president's far higher favorability ratings and the assurance to spooked Democrats of a familiar hand at the helm should Biden's health fail would prove to be a wise decision.

"As with the scenario that I propose for Biden and Obama to consider, there are other paths to an Obama return to the presidency that the 22nd Amendment would not bar, thus confirming that he is eligible to run in 2024 for vice president," he wrote. The former deputy solicitor general noted that, as some have suggested for 45th President Donald J. Trump, there is nothing constitutionally preventing a former president from serving as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, making them second-in-line-of-succession to the presidency under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. 

Lacovara's argument hinges on what interpretation the Supreme Court could make of what defines a person "eligible" for nomination to fill a vacancy in the office of vice president. Logically, a person could only be "eligible" to serve as vice president if they were legally able to serve as president, which an originalist interpretation would find.

While he claims that according to the 25th Amendment, "Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the vice president, 'the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.,'" adding, "Nothing suggests that a former two-term president would not be an otherwise 'eligible' candidate for the vice presidency in such a process." The SCOTUS bench currently contains six conservative justices, three of whom, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, are self-described originalists, according to ABA Journal.

If the Supreme Court were to be convinced that this controversy presents a "political question" and should be left to Congress, as it did with Texas v. Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, Lacovara has effectively outlined a political catastrophe that could see Obama once again take the Oval Office, one that could only be averted by a victory for Trump, or an unwillingness from Obama.