Brian Williams, this job is for you! No, not that stuffy old anchor chair you got bounced out of yesterday. I’m talking about Jon Stewart’s chair.

Stewart, as you surely know, is walking away from Comedy Central. He didn’t give a date, other than sometime this year. Can you say, “Perfect”?

The timetable dovetails nicely with your six-month suspension from NBC for making up stuff. Your gift for gab got you in hot water, but, if you play your cards right, it now could be the key to your next job.

I’m not usually given to conspiracy theories, but the timing of Stewart’s announcement and your suspension is too loaded to be a coincidence. Stewart could have dropped his bombshell at any time, so the fact that he did it, oh, at about the exact time NBC was dropping the bomb on you, well, that means something.

Hell, it might mean he wants your job!

Let’s face it — a career change for you makes sense for everyone. You had suddenly become a liability to NBC, and were bored with the news gig. Having to sit there, playing it straight while serious people droned on about serious things, made you sad. You played the part well enough to draw the biggest audience of the Big 3 newscasts. But it wasn’t you.

You are a song-and-dance man at heart, getting your kicks out of schtick and making people laugh. Maybe that’s where your daughter, Allison, got her talent, or maybe you are jealous.

No matter, you need a change. You can do deadpan, slapstick and wry — and wrap it around the news, the way Stewart does. You could top him if you crave it the way you once craved getting the best story.

I’ve seen you kill it before tough crowds. Boozed-up journalists, stuffy art patrons — you win them over with your gift for comedy.

Stewart and Letterman knew it, which is why they had you on so often. And the report in The New York Times that you wanted to replace Jay Leno rings as shocking but true. That’s who you want to be.

But first, you have to clean up that giant reputational mess at NBC. The network was bold in kicking you off the air, and it caught me by surprise.

We live in a time and place when high standards are old hat, and there is scoffing at the idea that there should be a single standard for honesty and everybody in public life should be held to it.

It’s a great idea, but here’s the disturbing truth: Almost nobody in public life is held to any standards, and honesty doesn’t count for much.

Think of cheats like Alex Rodriguez, the New England Patriots or the louts who turn basketball into a freak show, including the lucky-sperm screw-up who owns the Knicks.

Sure, they get a public spanking, but nothing serious enough to scare them straight. They calculate that the benefits of bad behavior outweigh the price of getting caught.

We don’t stick to standards in private settings, either. Snowballs in July are as common as a student or teacher getting a failing mark. In youth sports, everybody gets a trophy so nobody’s feelings get hurt.

Racial and ethnic quotas are based on the belief that if God had been smarter, He would have sprinkled intelligence, talent and success equally across the population.

But if “the system” is to blame for our behavior and responsible for saving us, none of us is truly free. The right to fail is a form of freedom, and losing it means losing our individuality.

I salute you — you broke that mold. You failed and NBC held you accountable. Taking away your fat paycheck showed the brass was deadly serious.

To underscore the point, the statement that network gumshoes are still digging sounded like you might already be toast forever. I assumed NBC saw you as too big to fire and would find a way to ease you back into the lineup.

But you apparently screwed up that scenario by botching the on-air apology, and that unleashed a public firestorm the network couldn’t control. As you know, ridicule is the deepest cut of all, and you were dying of a thousand wounds.

No doubt your bosses took your long career into account, or they might have sent you packing permanently, which is what they would have done to lesser beings. And there is probably an in-house argument that somebody above you should have stopped your fabricating sooner.

Still, this is a big deal — and a great deal. It holds you to basic standards of news gathering, but gives you a time out of the limelight to make a smooth segue to a new gig. It surely wasn’t the way you planned it, but the gods of television work in mysterious ways.

Break a leg.