President Franklin Roosevelt's first vice president, John Nance Garner, who served between 1932 and 1941, said of the vice presidency as "not worth a bucket of warm spit." Garner, who gave up his position as speaker of the House of Representatives, lamented that he gave up the second most important job in government for eight long years to become "Roosevelt's spare tire."

That may have been true up until not too long ago. Roosevelt's third vice president, Harry S. Trumann, was kept completely in the dark about the atomic bomb Roosevelt had American scientists build, and he only learned of the project upon assuming the presidency when Roosevelt died in office in April 1945.

President John F. Kennedy promised his choice for vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, whom he needed to win the crucial votes from Texas, that the office of the vice presidency would take on greater importance under his administration.

And indeed, Kennedy did assign his VP with various tasks, including responsibility for the all-important space program at the time that was in a competitive race with the Soviets, who were the first to send a man, Yuri Gagarin -- and a woman, Valentina Tereshkova -- into space. Kennedy wanted the Americans to be the first to land on the moon. Johnson's vice presidency gave the job new perspective upon Kennedy's assassination.

But the vice presidency was truly only given equal spotlight by President Bill Clinton when he chose Al Gore as his running mate. And George W. Bush's choice, Dick Cheney, also occupied a prime position of authority in the Bush (43) administration; quite a contrast to his father's Bush 41's VP Dan Quale, whose role as vice president differed vastly from Cheney's.

So what kind of vice president would Barak Obama's running mate Sen. Joe Biden be? Very different from the current VP, in every imaginable way, no doubt. One of the most prominent differences that makes Biden stand apart from your average politician is his profound knowledge of foreign affairs. Jim Rosapepe is a former U.S. ambassador to Romania and had the opportunity to work with Sen. Biden and learn first-hand of the vice presidential Democratic candidate's profound knowledge of foreign affairs during a meeting in Romania shortly after NATO's success in stopping ethnic cleaning in Kosovo.

Rosapepe believes a vice president should have the following qualities: he should be smart, aggressive, experienced, and respected by the president. Biden, says the former ambassador "is clearly all of those things."

Biden distinguished himself from other visitors during his visit to Romania by his profound inquiry, analysis, and commentary. His questions, says the former ambassador, "were on the PhD level, not Romania 101." It was remarkable because Biden is no specialist on Romania.

"Unlike the [George W.] Bush administration, which has been accused of tailoring its version of the facts to match its policy, Biden was trying to learn the facts first-hand to figure out what would be the right U.S. policy," said Rosapepe.

The value of a good vice president today is certainly worth more than the bucket of warm spit.