Charleston, S.C.

WITH Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama trying to figure out whether it would work for her to play teammate, the question keeps coming up of what to do with Bill Clinton. No White House occupant would want a restless former president hanging around.

Here’s an easy answer. Give Mr. Clinton a real job with real power, a challenging position that would be engaging, in part because it would be new.

Let me explain. Once the campaigns agree on an Obama-Clinton ticket, Mr. Obama calls Gov. David Paterson of New York, lays out the situation and gets an agreement that if an Obama-Clinton ticket wins, the governor appoints the former president to fill Mrs. Clinton’s Senate seat, where he would serve until 2010. He could then run in a special election for the two remaining years of the term.

As for precedent, recall that John Quincy Adams moved from the executive to the legislative branch of the federal government, serving in Congress after his time in the White House.