Walter Mondale

Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (born January 5, 1928) is an American politician and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He was the 42nd Vice President of the United States (1977-1981) under President Jimmy Carter. He was also a two-term United States Senator from Minnesota and the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1984 against the incumbent, Republican Ronald Reagan, who was reelected in a landslide victory when Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

Early life

Walter Frederick ("Fritz") Mondale was born on January 5, 1928, in Ceylon, Minnesota, the son of Theodore Sigvaard Mondale, a Methodist minister, and Claribel Cowan Mondale. He spent his boyhood in the small towns of southern Minnesota, where he attended public schools. His half-brother was the Unitarian minister Lester Mondale. He was educated at Macalester College in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota, where he earned his B.A. in political science, graduating in 1951. Mondale didn't have the money for law school, so he enlisted in the U.S. Army in part to take advantage of the G.I. Bill. He then served two years at Fort Knox, as a corporal in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He graduated with a law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1956, having also served on the law review and as a law clerk in the Minnesota Supreme Court. He began to practice law in Minneapolis.

Entry into politics and U.S. Senator

Mondale has been involved in national politics since the 1940s. At 20 years old, he was already making a name in Minnesota politics by helping organize Hubert Humphrey's successful Senate campaign in 1948.

Minnesota Governor Orville Freeman appointed Mondale to the state's attorney general in 1960, to fill the vacancy left by Miles Lord who was named U.S. attorney. Mondale had just successfully managed Freeman's gubernatorial campaign. Mondale was just 32, and only four years out of law school, when he became attorney general of Minnesota. He spent two terms as attorney general. He also served as a member of the President’s Consumer Advisory Council from 1960 to 1964.

On December 30, 1964, Mondale was appointed by Minnesota Governor Karl Rolvaag to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by Hubert Humphrey's resignation after being elected Vice President of the United States.

In 1966, Mondale defeated Republican candidate Robert A. Forsythe, 53.9% to 45.2%. The voters of Minnesota returned Mondale to the Senate again in 1972 by a greater margin.

During his years as a senator, Mondale served on the Finance Committee, the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Budget Committee, and the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. He also served as chairman of the Select Committee on Equal Education Opportunity and as chairman of the Intelligence Committee's Domestic Task Force.

As a senator, Mondale also gained public notice for his role in the investigation of the Apollo 1 fire. As they delved deeper into the reasons behind the tragedy, NASA officials were confronted by some "skeletons in their closet." Mondale raised the question of negligence on the part of management and the prime contractor, North American Aviation, Inc., by introducing the "Phillips Report" of 1965-1966. The implication was that NASA had been thinking of replacing North American. Mondale's investigation also alluded to a document, The Baron Report, by employee Thomas R. Baron, which was critical of the contractor's operations at the Cape.

Vice President

When Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for president in 1976, he chose Mondale as his running mate. Mondale was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States on 20 January, 1977. He became the fourth vice president in four years. He was the first vice president to reside at the official vice presidential residence, Number One Observatory Circle. Under Carter, Mondale traveled extensively through the nation and the world advocating U.S. policy. Carter and Mondale were renominated at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, but lost to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. That same year, Mondale opened the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York (Reagan would be the first American president to open an Olympic games held in the U.S.).

Presidential nominee of 1984

After a brief return to the practice of law, Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1984 election. He chose U.S. Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York as his running mate, making her the first woman nominated for that position by a major party. Mondale ran a liberal campaign, supporting a nuclear freeze and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). He spoke against what he considered to be unfairness in Reagan's economic policies and the need to reduce federal budget deficits.

When he made his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Mondale said: "Let's tell the truth. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." Although he intended this to demonstrate that he was honest while Reagan was hypocritical, it was widely remembered as simply a campaign pledge to raise taxes, and it hurt him in the end. In 1986, Reagan did sign into law a bill that raised taxes for corporations, but at the same time cut taxes further for individual taxpayers.

In the election, Mondale was defeated in a landslide, winning only the District of Columbia and his home state of Minnesota (by a mere 3,761 votes ^*), thus securing only 13 electoral votes to Reagan's 525. Mondale's defeat was among the worst for any Democratic Party candidate in history, and the worst for any major-party candidate since Alf Landon's loss to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.

Mondale won 37,577,352 votes a total of 40.6% of the popular vote in the election. Mondale came in 40% or over in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Private citizen and ambassador

Following the election, Mondale returned again to private law practice, with Dorsey & Whitney in Minnesota in 1987. From 1986 to 1993, Mondale was chairman of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

Under the presidency of Bill Clinton, he was U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996, chaired a bipartisan group to study campaign finance reform, and was Clinton's special envoy to Indonesia in 1998.

Mondale's 46 year old daughter, Eleanor, is a television personality, who is currently battling brain cancer.

His youngest son William H. Mondale, 44, is a lawyer, and a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota from 1990 to 2000. He is currently the Director of International Business Development for Petters Consumer Brands LLC in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

His other son, Theodore A. "Ted" Mondale, is an entrepreneur who was a former State Senator in Minnesota, and is currently the CEO of Nazca Solutions, an technology fulfillment venture. He is a father of three children Louis Frederick, Amanda Joan and Berit Claire Mondale.

2002 Senate election

In 2002, Democratic US Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who was running for re-election, died in a plane crash just 11 days before the November 5 election. Mondale, at age 74, replaced Wellstone on the ballot, at the urging of Wellstone's relatives. (The seat that Mondale was running in Wellstone's stead was in fact the one that he himself had held before in the Senate prior to resigning in order to become Vice President.) However, he narrowly lost the election to Republican opponent Norm Coleman. Upon conceding the election, Mondale said, "At the end of what will be my last campaign, I want to say to Minnesota, you always treated me well, you always listened to me". Mondale finished with 1,067,246 votes (47.34%) to Coleman's 1,116,697 (49.53%) out of 2,254,639 votes cast.

Published Works

Mondale published the book The Accountability of Power: Toward a Responsible Presidency in 1975.

Norwegian ancestry

Mondale has always maintained strong ties to his ancestral Norway. Coincidentally, when he entered the Senate in 1964 he took over the seat of vice president Hubert Humphrey, another Norwegian-American. In later years Mondale has served on the executive committee of the Peace Prize Forum, an annual conference co-sponsored by the Norwegian Nobel Institute and five Midwestern colleges of Norwegian heritage. In connection with Norway's Centennial Celebration in 2005, he chaired the committee to promote and develop cultural activities between Norway and Norwegian-American organizations. During the 1984 Presidential election he was even nicknamed "Norwegian wood", a play on the Beatles song, his ancestory and his appearance.

While he was in office, Twin Cities Public Television produced a documentary about him entitled "Walter Mondale: There's a Fjord in Your Past," a play on the well-known advertising slogan, "There's a Ford in Your Future."

Trivia

In 2002, the University of Minnesota Law School rechristened its building "Walter F. Mondale Hall"
Walter Mondale is mentioned in quotes in Bart vs. Australia (the US Navy's fictional laundry ship, the U.S.S. Mondale), Lisa's First Word and Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington episodes of The Simpsons. In Groening's other series, Futurama, Amy Wong whispers in a 20th Century History lecture, "Boring. Let's hear about Walter Mondale already."
In the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon Mondale was played by John Slattery.
In the TV series Beverly Hills 90210, lead character and Minnesota native Brandon Walsh owned a car he named "Mondale".

Former President Jimmy Carter and former Vice President Walter Mondale hold the record for the longest-living post-White House president and vice president in American history. They passed the record established by President John Adams and his vice-president Thomas Jefferson. As of May 23, 2006, Carter and Mondale have lived 25 years, 123 days since leaving office in 1981. That is a day longer than Adams and Jefferson, who both famously died on July 4, 1826.

In the TV Series American Dad Episode "Stan Knows Best" Stan Smith thought he programmed his daughter Hayley Smith, to kill Mondale, by using the trigger word Rhubarb.

Of all the surviving former Vice Presidents, Mondale and Al Gore are the only Democrats still alive. Remarkably they were both their party's nominee for the presidency although each had a different experience of attempting to win the White House from the other. Mondale had already been out of the vice presidency when he was nominated in 1984. Gore in contrast was still Vice President when he was nominated in 2000 but although he won the popular vote, he narrowly lost the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

References

Gillon, Steven M. The Democrats’ Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy. 1992
Mondale, Walter. The Accountability of Power. 1975.

External links

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