U.S. News & World Report is proclaiming Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, as one of America's Top 22 leaders, and Vice President Joe Biden wrote the magazine's story explaining why Hatch is an effective lawmaker.

"Hatch has demonstrated that a member of Congress can work to pass meaningful, bipartisan legislation without compromising his core principles and strongly held ideological convictions," Biden wrote.

The magazine produced its fifth annual Best Leaders issue for its November 2009 edition, which is due on newsstands Tuesday. An online version of America's Best Leaders is available now at www.usnews.com/leaders.

The magazine, working with Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, honored leaders not only in government, but also in business, education, the arts and public service.

Also among this year's top leaders was the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Hatch wrote the magazine's story about his old friend. "What made him so exceptional was not his partisanship but his ability and willingness to set party aside when there was some good to be done," Hatch wrote.

Other leaders cited in the magazine include Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke; Costco President James Sinegal; former pro basketball star and now school leader David Robinson; former astronaut Sally Ride; choreographer Twyla Tharp and all "military senior enlisted officers."

In the story about Hatch, Biden noted they served 33 years together in the Senate. Even though they belong to different parties, they worked together on what Biden considers to be his greatest legislative accomplishments, and he said Hatch crossed party lines to help him.

"What sets him apart and makes him an effective legislator is his willingness to find common ground with Democratic counterparts when he believes it is the right thing to do — even when it isn't the politically convenient thing to do," Biden wrote.

Biden said he was able to pass the Violence Against Women Act largely because of Hatch's "ability to recognize common goals among his colleagues and his unwillingness to put party ahead of principle."

Biden noted that he and Hatch usually disagree on issues, "but even in those circumstances when partisan divides were the widest, he didn't make his disagreements personal. And while he didn't always have many Democratic allies, he had even fewer Democratic enemies."

Biden also said Hatch's efforts through the years with liberal Kennedy to reach compromise legislation, including this year's Serve America Act," are lessons "in bipartisanship that politicians of all stripes, from staunch conservatives to committed liberals, can learn from Orrin Hatch."

e-mail: lee@desnews.com