Former Vice President and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale has died at the age of 93 after a long political career spanning from Hubert Humphrey to Bill Clinton.
Walter F. Mondale, the former Democratic senator and vice president whose unusually candid and forward-looking bid for the pinnacle of American politics was blocked by President Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection victory in 1984, died April 19 at his home in Minneapolis. He was 93.
Family friend and spokeswoman Kathy Tunheim announced the death but did not provide a specific cause.
Mr. Mondale was a major player on the national political stage for two decades, beginning in 1964, when he was appointed to the Senate seat from Minnesota that his political mentor, Hubert H. Humphrey, had given up to become President Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Mondale rose in the party hierarchy while establishing a reputation as a diligent legislator and a champion of such liberal causes as open housing and anti-poverty programs. His star ascended still further in 1976 when Jimmy Carter, the former Georgia governor and Democratic nominee for president, chose him as his running mate.
That November, Carter and Mondale — aided no doubt by the lingering shadow of the Watergate political scandal over the GOP — narrowly defeated President Gerald Ford and Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.). But four years later — weighed down by an oil crisis and the Iranian hostage crisis — the Carter-Mondale ticket lost the White House to Reagan and his running mate, George H.W. Bush, in the 1980 election.
Mr. Mondale was back in 1984, running this time at the top of the Democratic ticket, but he lost to Reagan in spectacular fashion.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Mondale is, perhaps, best remembered for his startling promise at the Democratic National Convention to attack the budget deficit by raising taxes and for his choosing a female running mate: Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York, who became the first woman to run on a major-party presidential ticket.
A tax increase was unavoidable, he reasoned, and voters needed to be told the truth.
“By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds,” he declared during his acceptance speech. “Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”
As for having a woman on the ticket, he deemed it long overdue.
Neither his frankness about fiscal matters nor his progressive stand on women’s place in national politics appears to have done him much good. The former made it easier for Republicans to label him a tax-and-spend Democrat; the latter failed to bring a majority of women to his side or even to put a significant dent in women’s support for Reagan.
After the election, Mr. Mondale acknowledged another problem. He lacked the charisma needed to sell his candidacy on television. And he was competing against Reagan, a former Hollywood actor and California governor who was a master of the medium. “I told the truth,” Mr. Mondale said in an interview with The Washington Post. “While my opponent was handing out rose petals, I was handing out coal. . . . I did not communicate hope and opportunity. . . . I’m not trying to excuse what happened in 1984 on the basis of television technique, even though I think Reagan’s a genius and I’m not very good at it.”
In the landslide of 1984, Reagan received more than 54.45 million votes, or almost 58.8 percent of the popular vote, to Mr. Mondale’s 37.57 million, or 40.6 percent. The tally in the electoral college was even more decisive, with Mr. Mondale winning only Minnesota and the District of Columbia — for a total of 13 electoral votes to Reagan’s record-high 525. And Mr. Mondale carried his home state by fewer than 4,000 votes out of more than 2 million cast.
Afterward, Mr. Mondale returned to private law practice in Minnesota, but he reentered public life in 1993 when President Bill Clinton named him ambassador to Japan. He served in Tokyo until December 1996, when he went home to Minnesota again, saying he had ended his political career.
Something I remembered. From Wikipedia: In 2002, Mondale became the last-minute choice of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party to run for Senate after the death of Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash less than two weeks before the election. Mondale narrowly lost the race to Saint Paul mayor Norm Coleman. (This is the guy who was replaced by Al Franken.)
In 2002, it was funny that he lost a major election in every state in the union.
Less funny today, of course.
The DLC was started in 1985 because of the events of 1984. So Walter Mondale was, in a weird way, a precursor to Bill Clinton.Report
He was a true public servant in every sense of the word and a true liberal who believed that government could be a force for social progress. As Minnesota Attorney General, he urged the Supreme Court to uphold the rights of criminal defendants who could not afford counsel on their own.Report
A lovely thread about Mondale.
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That brought a tear to my eye. Damn, what a kind thing to do!Report
VP Mondale was one of my earliest public service and political influences. He definitely set a high bar for those of us who choose public service, and he was probably an early Democratic Socialist, no matter what his party affiliation. That he never turned bitter after his time in DC is equally a testament to his character.
He is missed already.Report