Are both Pence and Harris ready to be president?

IT IS not surprising that very few people can recall the names of most of America's vice-presidents. President Franklin Roosevelt's first Vice-President John Nance Garner famously said that his title was "not worth a bucket of warm spit".

Yet we certainly do remember the names of two VPs - Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson - who ended up filling the shoes of respectively Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy who had died in office, and who distinguished themselves in their roles as commanders-in-chief.

The notion that vice-presidents are "only a heartbeat away" from the presidency, meaning that they would have to take over if the president died, has never been more pertinent than it is this year. The oldest man to ever occupy the White House - a 74-year-old who has just contracted a deadly virus - is running against a 77-year-old challenger who is showing his age and will be over 80 by the end of his first term.