What does it take to be a great US president? The leaders that Democrats revere have strikingly similar characteristics. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Barack Obama were brilliant orators with a Harvard education and an aristocratic bearing.
The vice-presidents they picked also had a lot in common. Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden all made their careers in the Senate — and lacked the charisma and ivy-league gloss of the presidents they worked for. As vice-presidents, all three were sometimes treated with barely disguised disdain by the staffs of FDR, JFK and Obama.
