Walter Mondale, Ex-Vice President and Champion of Liberal Politics, Dies at 93
Under Jimmy Carter, he was the first V.P. to serve as a genuine partner of a president. His own run for the top position ended in a crushing defeat.
Walter F. Mondale in 1983. “My whole life, I worked on the idea that government can be an instrument for social progress,” he said in 2010. “We need that progress. Fairness requires it.”Credit...George Tames/The New York Times
By
Steven R. Weisman
April 19, 2021Updated 9:30 p.m. ET
Walter F. Mondale, the former vice president and champion of liberal politics, activist government and civil rights who ran as the Democratic candidate for president in 1984, losing to President Ronald Reagan in a landslide, died on Monday at his home in Minneapolis. He was 93.
Kathy Tunheim, a spokeswoman for the family, announced the death. She did not specify a cause.
A son of a minister of modest means, Fritz Mondale, as he was widely known, led a rich public life that began in Minnesota under the tutelage of his state’s progressive pathfinder,
Hubert H. Humphrey. He achieved his own historic firsts, especially with his selection of Representative
Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York as his running mate in 1984, the first woman to seek the vice presidency on a major national ticket.
Under President Jimmy Carter, from 1977 to 1981, Mr. Mondale was the first vice president to serve as a genuine partner of a president, with full access to intelligence briefings, a weekly lunch with Mr. Carter, his own office near the president’s and his own staff integrated with Mr. Carter’s.
In a statement released on Monday night, Mr. Carter wrote: “Today I mourn the passing of my dear friend Walter Mondale, who I consider the best vice president in our country’s history. During our administration, Fritz used his political skill and personal integrity to transform the vice presidency into a dynamic, policy-driving force that had never been seen before and still exists today.”
Throughout his career, Mr. Mondale advocated an assertive and interventionist role for the federal government, especially on behalf of the poor, minority groups and women.
“I’m a liberal or a progressive,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2010. “I didn’t use the ‘liberal’ word much, because I thought it carried too much baggage. But my whole life, I worked on the idea that government can be an instrument for social progress. We need that progress. Fairness requires it.”
He furthered that cause during his 12 years representing Minnesota in the United States Senate, where he was a strong supporter of civil rights, school aid, expansion of health care and child care, consumer protection, and many other liberal programs. In 1974, he briefly explored running for president.
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Mr. Mondale represented Minnesota for 12 years in the Senate. Mr. Mondale, second from right, was on hand when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an open housing bill in 1968.Credit...Associated Press
Two years later, Mr. Carter, a former Georgia governor, wanted someone experienced in Washington when he chose Mr. Mondale as his running mate. Before joining the ticket, Mr. Mondale got a promise that he would have a close working relationship with Mr. Carter, with influence on policy, noting that he had seen Mr. Humphrey marginalized in that post by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the turbulent 1960s. Mr. Humphrey, a political mentor and fellow Minnesotan, urged him to accept the offer.
At the White House, Mr. Mondale was a leader of the administration’s liberal wing, frequently clashing with Southern conservatives as he argued for affirmative action and more help for the unemployed and other spending programs as the economy soured.
He was sharply at odds with the president in 1979 as energy prices spiked and lines at gasoline stations stretched around the block. Mr. Carter had decided to address the turmoil in a televised speech to the nation from the Oval Office about what he perceived to be a “crisis of confidence” in the American spirit. Mr. Mondale not only advised against the speech; he was “distraught” when he heard the plans for it, Mr. Carter later wrote.
In his memoir, “The Good Fight,” published in 2010, Mr. Mondale called the episode “the only serious falling out that Carter and I had in four years.” The address — known as the “malaise” speech, though that word was never used — was followed by the firing of several cabinet members and a plunge in Mr. Carter’s approval ratings, from which the president never recovered.
The Carter administration used Mr. Mondale for foreign assignments and for building domestic support for its foreign policy initiatives. His rapport with Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel helped bring about the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel negotiated by Mr. Carter at Camp David in 1978. Mr. Mondale then helped sell the treaty to the American Jewish community.
He also generated support in Congress for the Panama Canal Treaty and for nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviet Union.
“You can divide every vice president in American history into two categories: pre-Walter Mondale and post-Walter Mondale,” former Vice President Al Gore said.
Mr. Carter chose Mr. Mondale as his running mate in 1976. He was the first vice president to serve as a genuine partner of a president.Credit...James Garrett/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty Images
Having lost some internal arguments on domestic matters, Mr. Mondale remained loyal and stumped the country for Mr. Carter against a liberal challenge for the party’s nomination in 1980 by
Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Mr. Kennedy assailed the administration’s budget cuts and deregulation of energy prices, but Mr. Mondale argued that liberals and conservatives alike needed to face up to the dangers of mounting deficits, which many economists said were stoking inflation.
He hammered the same theme running against Mr. Reagan in 1984, warning that deficits resulting from the Reagan tax cuts in 1981 also had to be reduced, in part by tax increases that he said were inevitable no matter who won.
“Let’s tell the truth,” he declared in his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, referring to the need to tackle deficits. “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”
The convention applauded his candor, but the Reagan camp pounced, gleefully portraying Mr. Mondale as favoring tax increases while the economy was surging. The Reagan campaign countered with an ad proclaiming that a new “morning in America” had dawned, and Mr. Reagan was swept back into office easily.
Mr. Mondale got less than 41 percent of the popular vote and lost every state except his native Minnesota, adding only the District of Columbia to his win column. (After his re-election, Mr. Reagan did end up raising some taxes.)
A rangy, square-built former college football player, roughly six feet tall, Mr. Mondale could appear formal and stiff in public. “I’m not good on TV,” he once said. “It’s just not a natural medium for me.”