Flashback: Obama surprises VP Joe Biden with Presidential Medal of Freedom

[sandensea]

5. A thing of beauty

Friendships, it's said, are hard to find in politics - and downright rare among presidents and their vice presidents.

Reagan and Poppy Bush, for example, were famously estranged (something about Hinckley - but I digress).

They spoke to each other so seldom, that "Thursday lunches" had to be staged for the press to dispel that impression. They'd get up and leave the minute the press did.

The same was done with Truman and FDR - who was so upset the convention removed Wallace from the '44 ticket (a Dixiecrat demand), he'd hardly look at Truman for those brief three months he was VP.

Poppy Bush, in turn, loathed Quayle - whom he was forced to select to placate the hard right.

But between Obama and Biden, by all accounts there was real friendship as well as good working relationship - and from two people who couldn't be more different.

Obama, cool and reserved; Biden, frank and effusive.

Carter always described a similar friendship with Mondale.

It's important.