![]() “Our relationship in the White House,” Mondale was quoted as saying in his Senate website biography, “held up under the searing pressure of that place because we entered our offices understanding - perhaps for the first time in the history of those offices - that each of us could do a better job if we maintained the trust of the other. Mondale’s wife, Joan, also attained more prominence than typical for a “second lady.” Bob Dole in November.Īt the time, much was made of the fact that Carter clearly wanted Mondale’s counsel and presence, something that definitely had not been true of past presidents - Mondale even had his own office in the White House. He opted out but ended up being chosen by Jimmy Carter as his running mate, the so-called “Fritz and Grits ticket.” They eked out a narrow win over President Gerald Ford and Kansas Sen. Heading into the 1976 election season, Mondale was expected to join a wide-open Democratic field in seeking the presidency. In 1968, Mondale helped chair Humphrey’s ill-fated presidential campaign after Humphrey’s defeat, he changed his stance on the Vietnam War, announcing his opposition in a speech at Macalester in October 1969. ![]() Frank Church (D-Idaho) that investigated the secret activities of the FBI and CIA. ![]() He also was part of the panel led by Sen. “He had a fine legal mind, loved to legislate and got along well with colleagues in both parties.”Īmong the achievements Shapiro cited were his efforts on behalf of civil rights legislation, as well as efforts to aid migrant farm workers. “Mondale had been an impressive senator in his own right,” wrote Shapiro in his 2012 book. Mondale went on to win full terms in 19.Īs a senator at the time of LBJ’s “Great Society,” Mondale followed in the tradition of Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, a dyed-in-the-wool New Deal liberal with ties to the progressive traditions of the Minnesota-Wisconsin region. Karl Rolvaag to fill Humphrey’s seat in the U.S. At that point, Mondale was appointed by Gov. Though the resolution of the Mississippi situation was not particularly satisfying to anyone, the Democratic Party held together and Humphrey ended up Lyndon B. In 1964, he helped Humphrey manage a volatile situation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, a heated dispute over the racial composition of Mississippi’s all-white delegation. After managing Freeman’s gubernatorial victory in 1960, he was appointed the state’s attorney general. He helped organize students for Humphrey’s Senate campaign in 1948, working for campaign manager Orville Freeman. Mondale had an interest in politics from a young age and his rise in it was tied to that of fellow Minnesotan Hubert H. After a stint in the Army during the Korean War, he graduated from the University of Minnesota’s law school on the GI Bill. Paul, then ultimately graduated from the University of Minnesota. Senate web site said: “As a senator, vice president, and presidential candidate, Mondale played a transitional role in the Democratic Party, seeking to bridge the generational and ideological divisions that racked the party during and after the 1960s.”Ī Minnesotan through and through, Walter Frederick Mondale’s biography reads like a map of his home state: He was born in Ceylon in Jan. “Carter accepted Mondale’s vision,” wrote Ira Shapiro in “The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis,” “of a vice president as a senior adviser, gave him an office in the West Wing, and made him probably the most influential vice president in history up to that time and a model for future vice presidents.” Though not a particularly polarizing figure, Mondale was a dedicated Democrat, a party loyalist whose fortunes would rise and fall with the party. “You can divide every vice president in American history into two categories: pre-Walter Mondale and post-Walter Mondale,” Al Gore, one of his successors as vice president, once said of him. During our administration, Fritz used his political skill and personal integrity to transform the vice presidency,” Carter, now 96, said in a statement Monday night. “Today I mourn the passing of my dear friend Walter Mondale, who I consider the best vice president in our country’s history. Those defeats put an end to the momentum of an accomplished career that included 12 years in the Senate and four as Carter’s uncommonly active vice president. The man known as “Fritz” had his seemingly effortless rise in politics halted twice by Ronald Reagan, once in 1980 when the Reagan-Bush ticket stomped Jimmy Carter’s bid for reelection and then, even more forcefully, in 1984, when Reagan obliterated Mondale’s bid for the presidency. ![]() The Associated Press reported his death, citing his family. Mondale, who was also the first presidential candidate to select a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, to be his running mate, was 93.
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