Walter Mondale Recordings

Walter Mondale
(1928 – 2021)

Born to a Methodist minister and a part-time music teacher in 1928, Walter Mondale grew up with a heavy influence on his father's religious beliefs including civil rights.  As a boy, Mondale's parents felt that the names; Walter and Frederick were too stilted for a boy his age so they gave him the lifelong nickname of Fritz.  During the Depression, Mondale and his family were forced to move around due to poverty.  By 1951, he had graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota, earning his BA in political science.  Shortly after graduation, because he could not afford to go to law school, Mondale enlisted in the United States Army.  He was assigned to the 3rd Armored Division at Fort Knox, Kentucky starting out as an armored reconnaissance vehicle crewman, then as an education programs specialist, and then the editor of the unit's newsletter; Tanker's Dust.  By the time he was discharged in 1953, Walter Mondale had attained the rank of corporal.  Aided by the GI Bill, Mondale was able to attend law school at the University of Minnesota.  He again graduated cum laude in 1956 with a BA in law.  Mondale would practice law for four years before entering politics.

Walter Mondale got his first taste of politics in 1948 at the age of 20 when he volunteered to work on the US Senate campaign on Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey.  Mondale was assigned the conservative 2nd District where he had grown up, so he knew the area.  He did manage to win that district for Humphrey by a comfortable margin.  Being bitten by the political bug, Mondale worked on campaigns for Orville Freeman who ran once unsuccessfully for governor of Minnesota in 1952 and twice successfully in 1954 and 1958.  By 1960, at the age of 32, Mondale was appointed state attorney general by Governor Freeman.  He would win the office in his own rite in 1962.  From 1960 to 1964, he would serve on the President's Consumer Advisory Council.

On December 30, 1964, after being elected Vice President of the United States, Hubert Humphrey resigned his seat in the US Senate.  Attorney General Mondale was chosen to fill Humphrey's vacant seat.  Realizing that the Democratic Party blue collar base was shifting to the right, Senator Mondale would adopt more center views on policies.  On the issue of civil rights, Mondale was much more liberal.  And when Lyndon Johnson was president, Mondale supported the Vietnam War, but when Richard Nixon was president, he opposed the war.

Vice Presidential Nominations were nothing new to Walter Mondale.  In 1972, Senator George McGovern had offered the position to him, which he declined.  After Jimmy Carter secured the Nomination for President at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, he chose Walter Mondale to be his running mate.  While at a campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio, Mondale spoke of the President and inflation stating that the country need a strong president to fight inflation, only to add that Gerald Ford didn't have the guts to stand up to big business.  During the Presidential Election of 1976, the Presidential Debates returned after a sixteen year absence.  But the Debates brought about something new, a Vice Presidential Debate.  This first VP Debate was between Senator Walter Mondale and Senator Bob Dole.  The Carter/Mondale ticket barely defeated the Ford/Dole ticket.  As Vice President, Walter Mondale in his duties as the President of the United States Senate cast a tie breaking vote to pass the Social Security financing bill.  He would be the first Vice President to have his office in the White House to assume a more activist role in the administration.  

Vice President Mondale traveled around the country and the world to promote the Carter administration's policies.  One tradition that continues to this day that Mondale started was the weekly lunch between the President and the Vice President.  Prior to Walter Mondale, the role of Vice President was purely figurehead.  Harry S Truman said of the office that the VP has two duties; getting those no accounts parade over every morning in the Senate, and going to funerals.  Under Mondale's tenure as Vice President, the office became a full-time participant and a troubleshooter for the administration.  Every subsequent Vice President has added their own personal stamp to the job.  Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris have been very active behind the scenes in Chaney and Harris' case and out front in the case of Gore and Biden.  However, in 1980, the Carter and Mondale was defeated for re-election by losing to Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.  Both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale hold the record for the longest post presidential and vice presidential retirement.  The previous record was that of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson at 25 years, four months as both Adams and Jefferson died on July 4, 1826.  In 2014, Mondale would shatter Richard Nixon's record of the longest Vice Presidential retirement.

After losing the Presidential Election of 1980, Walter Mondale briefly returned to private law practice at Winston and Strawn, but politics was in his blood and wanted to get back in the game.  He set his sights on running for the Democratic Party's Presidential Nomination in the Presidential Election of 1984.  Mondale's two leading contenders for the Nomination were Reverend Jesse Jackson of Illinois and Senator Gary Hart of Colorado.  While Hart won New Hampshire, Mondale had the Party leadership supporting him.  To force Gary Hart to explain his policies to the American people, Mondale used the popular Wendy's slogan, "Where's the beef?"  Walter Mondale would secure the delegates needed at the Democratic National Convention to gain the Nomination.  Mondale would also make American political history by naming as his running mate Geraldine Ferraro of New York, the first woman vice presidential candidate on a major political party ticket.  The campaign only got worse for Mondale and Ferraro as summer turned into fall.  Misogynistic slogans like an innuendo of the old 1950s TV show LEAVE IT TO BEAVER (Elect Wally and the Beaver) started popping up around the country.  Mondale ran on liberal policies like a freeze on nuclear weapons and support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).  When Walter Mondale told the truth that he would raise taxes and he is telling the people and Ronald Reagan will raise taxes but he will not tell the people, that was the final nail in the coffin.  Walter Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan winning only his native Minnesota and Washington DC; the two parts of the country who have voted Democratic in every Presidential Election since 1976.

In what should have been a quiet life of retirement, Walter Mondale did anything but.  He returned to practicing law at Dorsey and Whitney as well as chairing the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.  He served as Ambassador to Japan under Bill Clinton.  In 2002, Mondale spoke as part of Leaders Lecture Series in the United States Senate.  He spoke of the transformation of the Vice President in the Carter administration, the Senate Cloture Rule for ending debate, and the future of the Senate.  However, no one had any idea that approximately six weeks later, Walter Mondale would be a last minute replacement candidate for the US Senate in Minnesota as the Democratic Farm Labor Party's candidate after the untimely death of Senator Paul Wellstone on October 25, 2002.  Mondale would narrowly lose to St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman.  In his concession speech that November 5th, Walter Mondale stated, "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."  Had he won that race, Walter Mondale would have been the second Former Vice President to return to the US Senate in 32 years.  The first was fellow Minnesotan, Hubert Humphrey.

On April 19, 2021, Walter Mondale passed away at the age of 93 of natural causes.  Just the day before he had made phone calls to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz.  He would also e-mail his staff one last time declaring that he and his family have come to the conclusion that death is imminent.  He was preceded in death by his daughter, Eleanor in 2011 and his wife, Joan in 2014.