Is Joe Biden Really the Second Coming of F.D.R. and L.B.J.?
Save this story for later. Early in their Presidencies, when their Administrations are all about potential and the disappointments of political reality have not yet set in, many recent American leaders have been showered in speculative glory. Barack Obama was the object of such adulation at home and overseas that he won a Nobel Peace Prize after less than ten months in office. Other new Presidents have elicited favorable comparisons with their predecessors while still lacking much of a record of their own. When Bill Clinton came to the White House, in 1993, at the age of forty-six, he was the...