Getty Standing in for Obama: Joe Biden The vice president fills in for Obama with an African leader as the president tours Michigan with the VP's wife.

Vice President Joe Biden presided over a ceremony with a small West African nation on Wednesday, filling in for the man whose job he wants — as that man spent the day with Biden's wife.

“The president wishes he were here,” Biden told the Beninese president and others gathered for a compact signing ceremony in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. “The president is in Michigan, with my wife.”


Indeed, while President Barack Obama headed to a community college in the midwest with Jill Biden to talk about an issue close to the second lady’s heart, Biden spoke to an issue close to Obama’s: empowering the youth of Africa. As he spoke about a new generation of leaders on that continent, Biden played the ceremonial role of head of state as he considers whether to launch his own bid for the job.

The president would normally appear at such Millennium Challenge Corporation signings, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. foreign aid agency. So for Biden, sealing the $375 million grant for electricity in Benin was yet another taste of what would be on the other end of that road to the White House, and a chance for him to reflect on his decades in politics.





When he was a “young senator” on the Africa panel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the American posture toward the continent was different, Biden said: “It’s no longer ‘What can we do for you?' It is, ‘What can we do with you?’”

Biden noted that another revered Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, also stood in the ornate Indian Treaty Room when he created the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electricity and jobs to Appalachia.

During the event, Biden offered no fresh hints about whether he’ll try, one last time, to join the ranks of Roosevelt and Obama. Aside from a good-natured pause to kiss Angelique Kidjo, the Billboard-topping Beninese singer in attendance (“You’ve not won a Grammy,” Biden told President Boni Yayi, to explain her special treatment), Biden stayed on message.

“I’m deeply optimistic about your future,” he said. “I see a young generation ready to lead your country in the future.”

Most of the Democrats running to replace the 54-year-old Obama aren’t of a younger generation. Hillary Clinton is 67. Sen. Bernie Sanders is 74. The vice president is 72.

Instead of the future, Biden spoke of his own past, recalling how his mother told him as a child, “Nothing good comes of standing on a corner.”

But not long after that exhortation to keep the youth engaged came a reminder of the loss of a leader in a younger Biden generation.

In an apparent reference to Biden’s son Beau, who passed away earlier this year, Yayi opened his speech by saying that “everything that touches you, touches us as well,” according to a simultaneous translation of his French remarks.

“We hope great courage for you,” Yayi said, as he called for a period of silence. The crowd of around 75 stood for about 10 seconds.

After they sat down, Biden listened to the rest of the speech, his face set in a frown, nodding whenever Yayi talked about democracy.

