WASHINGTON — Graceful 44th President Barack Obama turned 58 on Aug. 4. For his birthday, let him tell America why he chose Joe Biden — a full generation older — for vice president.

The reason I say that: In this burning turn in time marked by violent hatred in two storied towns, we need to know. Dayton, Ohio, just had a Trump rally and a mass shooting. El Paso, Texas, lost 22 in a gun rampage.

Obama's decision to pick Biden is now of direct consequence to the nation's future.

Could it be that Obama, famously a fatherless child, stranger and sojourner, was seeking a father figure in the genial Biden?

We can't afford to elect an aging warhorse simply for sentimentality's sake — no matter how much we long for a vanished Obama Age of beautiful reason. We were reminded of Obama's way with words in a statement he made on our present moral crisis. As bumbling Biden's best friends admit, eloquence and gravitas are not his strong suits.

For all its teeming talent and fresh blood, the Democratic Party has Biden, 76, at the front of the field and polls challenging President Donald Trump, 73. Biden spent 35 years in the Senate, eight as vice president. He's had the luck of the Irish in show business, representing a state as small as Delaware.

Biden brags, often on Obama's coattails, though his "best friend" has stayed mum on his trying again. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, is running not far behind Biden.

Strangely, Biden has run for president three times with dismal results, vetted over and over. Yet his past is now emerging as a burden: a harsh 1994 crime bill, his early stand on school segregation and busing, his hapless conduct of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman in 1991.

In this century, he voted for the Iraq War. Flaws aside, Obama cast the Southern-accented (from a former slave state) Biden as his White House friendly face. There were smarter senators. Why?

After all, the Chicago sensation was unknown in Washington, a freshman senator on a sprint to the White House. Biden had been around the block a time or two — or three. Supposedly, everyone liked Joe, just because. Biden is 18 years Obama's senior, relating straight from the heart, while cool Obama speaks from the head.

Obama, who prefers policy analysis to horse-trading politics, counted on Biden to handle heavy dealings with old pals in Congress. Biden did not command the respect — or inspire the fear — needed for tough negotiations. He gave the game away to Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts and including a public option in the Affordable Care Act, a raging issue dividing Democrats in the 2020 election cycle.

Obama's defense secretary, Robert Gates, declared Biden "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy" issue. Still, everyone likes average Joe.

The father-son dynamic is the simple, likely case, worth delving into. In "Dreams From my Father," Obama's lyrical 1995 memoir, he casts himself in a Homeric epic light, as the son in search of his father. The late Barack Obama, Ph.D., returned to Kenya soon after his biracial son was born — in the United States. Growing up mostly in Hawaii, Barack seldom saw this absent, elusive figure.

Biden is emotionally present and as eager to please as a cocker spaniel. He warmed the White House, giving Obama a reassuring "dad" around. So what if he gave bad advice on the Osama bin Laden raid? Transparency and good feelings are Biden's strong suits.

The Obama-Biden dynamic breaks new ground in presidential history. John F. Kennedy, the youthful president Obama takes after, picked shrewd Senate master Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Nine years his senior, Johnson came from strategic Texas.

Neither Kennedy nor George W. Bush, who chose old Dick Cheney, were in search of mythical father figures. Their powerful fathers were their major influencers.

Some say Biden called up Obama's white "Gramps," an earthy, open and sweet soul he wrote a wise poem about at age 19. It's titled "Pop." Obama's real father was only there in, as he said, "a chamber of my dreams."

Let this American quest rest. Here and now.

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