From this conservative’s standpoint, Walter Mondale was wrong on almost every issue imaginable. Nonetheless, the former vice president, who died Monday at age 93, was a thoroughly decent man and a dedicated public servant: an honorable, old-school liberal and a patriot. Today’s political world could use more of his style of politician.
As a 20-year-old, Mondale worked for Hubert Humphrey as Humphrey (also later the U.S. vice president) ousted communists from Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. As Humphrey’s protege at each step of Mondale’s career, Mondale shared Humphrey’s pro-union, fiercely liberal, but anti-communist beliefs. While nobody so close to 1960s-1970s union bosses could be accused of lacking sharp elbows, Mondale also shared Humphrey’s sunny outlook and old-style, end-of-day graciousness.
He also had good political horse sense, furiously advising President Jimmy Carter not to make what became widely pilloried as the “malaise speech,” saying that “an administration that came in pledging to be as good as the American people should not change into one urging the people to be as good as the government.”
It was an essential insight lost on far too many of today’s “progressives.”
After fighting off a supremely tough challenge from Colorado Sen. Gary Hart for the 1984 Democratic nomination (Hart actually carried more states than Mondale did), Mondale was no match for President Ronald Reagan at the height of the Gipper’s popularity. But as Reagan was en route to coming within 3,700 votes in Mondale’s own Minnesota of achieving the first 50-state sweep in presidential election history, the most famous debate exchange between the two stands as one of the most refreshing reminders of how even the most avid rivals once practiced a more respectful politics.
When Reagan uttered his famous line, defusing the “age issue” in that campaign, that he was “not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Mondale joined everybody else on hand in laughing broadly. Mondale saw his rivals as political adversaries and as respectable human beings, not as mortal enemies.
Reagan’s camp recognized this.
“Vice President Mondale was a true diplomat and statesman,” said Fred Ryan, the chairman of the board of the Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. “Upon conceding the election to Ronald Reagan, he told the newly re-elected President, ‘the people have made their decision and, therefore, since we are all Americans, we will go forward together.’”
Ryan ended with these appropriate words: “America has lost a leader who Ronald Reagan knew to be a great man and a happy warrior.”
