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When Walter Mondale the pioneering vice president under President Carter ended up on the losing end of Ronald Reagan’s landmark 49-state landslide in 1984, he fretted that it would dominate, even warp, his legacy.
But in reality Mondale, who as a senator was a spokesman for racial justice and an opponent of the Vietnam War, was a fiery reformer who selected the first female member of a national political ticket; an introspective populist who tried to rally Americans to care for the poor during the Reagan-era ascendancy of industrialists and bankers; and, in retirement, a beloved senior statesman of the Democratic Party and sober-minded prairie practitioner of common sense.
Walter Mondale transformed the role of the U.S. vice-president Published April 20, 2021
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Walter F. Mondale, the former U.S. senator, vice-president, presidential nominee and ambassador who died Monday night at the age of 93, will be remembered for being at once the last and the first.
He was the last Democrat of the old New Deal tradition, drawing on the support of working-class people and the striving while harbouring a devout belief in the role of government programs to ease the harshness of life. Today’s Democrats have a far different profile and have witnessed the flight of blue-collar voters to the Donald Trump Republicans.
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Years ago, during a former presidential administration, there was a dinner at the White House honoring a prominent patron of the arts. His twenty-something stepsons were seated on either side of a celebrity who was then, and remains now, a household name. She was not pleased. “She took one look at the seating and called over the White House social secretary and said, ‘I do not find this to be appropriate seating. I do not know these people,’” recounts one of the stepsons (as long as no one’s identity is revealed). “The secretary said, ‘These are the sons of the honoree of the evening and if you are not comfortable, we suggest you not stay.’ Of course, she did stay.”
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