Walter Mondale: Businessman, statesman, ordinary Minnesotan
Sharon Schmickle
Star Tribune
Published Nov. 3, 2002 MOND03
Customers at the Little Wagon restaurant in Minneapolis often do a quiet double take when they see Walter Mondale eating a turkey on rye at one of the tables.
As vice president of the United States, Mondale dined on plates bearing the seal of the world's most powerful leader. As U.S. ambassador to Japan, he hosted elegant meals. As a private citizen in Minneapolis, he's comfortable at meatloaf and hamburger joints such as the Wagon, where Metrodome fans mingle with hacks from nearby courthouses and newsrooms.
Mondale has made a niche for himself in many worlds. Now his respected record in national politics has propelled him into an unexpected campaign, succeeding fellow Democrat Paul Wellstone in the U.S. Senate. Wellstone and his wife, Sheila, died Oct. 25 in a plane crash.
If elected, Mondale would not be the same politician who joined the Senate in 1964. Nor is he the same man who suffered a humiliating defeat in a 1984 bid for president.
The Mondale who is asking Minnesotans to vote for him on Tuesday has been shaped in part by the two decades since he held elected office. He has been a businessman who served on corporate boards, a lecturer and an active partner in a prominent law firm. On Friday, he said he has resigned from the boards and left the law firm.
"Those years have changed me," he said. "When I first arrived at the Senate, I was awfully sure of everything."
His bedrock views remain solid, he said, but now he is "more anxious to hear what others have to say, and more interested in finding some kind of civil common ground."
He also is an ordinary Minnesotan, doting on his grandchildren, walking his dog around Lake of the Isles and slipping into the daily life of downtown Minneapolis.
"I've seen him stand in line waiting for a table during the lunch-hour rush," said Mary Jane Kirkpatrick, a waitress at the Little Wagon. "He never comes in with a swagger saying, 'I'm important. Seat me first.' "
Some Republicans translate that relaxed image into geriatric terms, saying the 74-year-old Mondale can't catch fire with today's voters.
Age alone is not a turnoff, said Leah Sand, a senior at Macalester College in St. Paul, but Mondale's challenge is to convince young voters that he shares their visions. Other students said they would have preferred to pass Wellstone's torch to a rising star.
Mondale's foes say he carries the liberal baggage that voters rejected in 1984, giving Ronald Reagan a landslide victory. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said recently on "NBC Sunday" that Mondale would bring to office "a long history of raising taxes."
Indeed, Mondale was damaged in 1984 by his blunt prediction that deficit spending was making a tax increase inevitable. Reagan's successor, George Bush, was forced to renege on his "read my lips" pledge never to raise taxes.
Critics, including Gov. Jesse Ventura, also ask how Mondale's corporate involvement squares with his party's traditional loyalties: Can voters trust someone who cut his political teeth in union halls and later sat on corporate boards?
Then there's the wooden Norwegian factor. Mondale expresses passion for progressive ideals, but he rarely flashes it. Even admirers admit that the restrained son of a music teacher and Methodist minister can seem boring in an era when politics is part show biz. Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant once joked that he had voted for Reagan because, "Who would want to draw Walter Mondale for four years?"
Last week, Oliphant depicted a rumpled, napping Mondale being awakened from retirement by a frantic Democratic donkey.
Walter Frederick (Fritz) Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minn., and moved to Elmore, Minn., where he was a high school star in basketball, track and football.
As a student at Macalester, he met then-Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey and caught political fever. He graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 1951, served as a corporal in the U.S. Army, returned to the university to earn a law degree and entered private practice.
Mondale said at Macalester last week that his greatest moment on that campus was a blind date with Joan Adams, the daughter of a campus chaplain. They married and had three children -- Theodore, Eleanor and William.
Change from within
Now the Mondales have pledged that "Paul and Sheila's fight for the working people and the forgotten people of Minnesota must go on." But it would be silly to think that Mondale would serve simply as Wellstone's stand-in, said seasoned Congress watchers.
"Walter Mondale is not Paul Wellstone with wrinkles," said Steven Gillon, resident historian for the History Channel and author of a book about Mondale.
Wellstone identified himself as an outsider, even in his own party. Mondale's strength has been forging change from the inside.
Mondale was appointed to the Senate in 1964 to fill the vacancy created when Humphrey became vice president. He advanced his reputation as a civil rights warrior by pushing passage of a ban on housing discrimination. In 1969, he reversed his position on the Vietnam War and called it "a military, a political and a moral disaster." He also played a prominent role in investigating the FBI and CIA in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
After Jimmy Carter chose Mondale to round out his ticket in 1976, the team became known as "Fritz and Grits."
Mondale assumed more meaningful duties than many vice presidents. He traveled as an advocate for U.S. policies in Asia, Africa and Europe. Yet as Carter struggled to set a clear course for his presidency, Mondale was deeply frustrated, historians reported. Whatever his feelings, Mondale never aired them publicly.
Last weekend, Mondale got a phone call from his old boss. Mondale said they exchanged expressions of grief over Wellstone's death. Then Carter added his voice to the others urging Mondale to run for the Senate. Mondale has pledged to serve a full six-year term. His doctors said last week that he is healthy.
When Minnesota Democrats chanted, "We want Fritz," at their endorsing convention Wednesday night, the call echoed through the decades to an earlier era.
Today's attack-style television campaigns are out of touch with his emphasis over the years on straight talk about issues. He refuses to attack his opponents, and he has never mastered sound bites. In a culture where Homer Simpson is a sage, he quotes Shakespeare.
In 1984, Mondale did score a memorable one-liner facing a Democratic rival, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart. When Hart claimed to be the candidate of new ideas, Mondale borrowed a line from a hamburger chain's TV commercial: "Where's the beef?"
Later, Mondale grabbed headlines by choosing U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate, the first -- and, so far, the only -- woman on a major party ticket.
After the stinging defeat, Mondale faded from the limelight. He practiced law and launched policy studies at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
A senior statesman abroad
In 1993, President Bill Clinton asked Mondale to serve as ambassador to Japan. Mondale was 65, the age when most Americans retire. Instead, the Mondales moved to Tokyo along with their spaniel, Digger.
The assignment dramatically expanded Mondale's understanding of government and foreign affairs, said Edward Lincoln, a foreign policy expert with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., who was a special economic adviser in Japan.
It took a while for the straightforward Midwesterner to learn to maneuver in Japan, where the person with clout might not be the highest-ranking government official, Lincoln said. Mondale gained not only new insights but also strength as a negotiator. "He's not somebody who pounds the table," Lincoln said. "But he's no pushover, either. He is determined and forceful."
The Reagan and Bush administrations had banged on Japan's trade doors for years, but Clinton attacked them in his campaign for failing to open Japan's markets. Thus, trade was a top priority for Mondale. Under his watch, more than 20 new accords were forged.
Beyond trade, it fell to Mondale to calm Japanese anger after U.S. servicemen raped an Okinawan schoolgirl. He won respect from the Japanese by apologizing in person to the family and the prime minister.
When Mondale asked to leave Japan in December 1996, he said he wanted to come home to Minnesota, cut down a Christmas tree with his three grandkids and go fishing.
Back home, he became a director for nonprofit organizations, including the Mayo Foundation, Minnesota Public Radio and the University of Minnesota Foundation.
Goldman, Sachs & Co. hired him as senior Japan adviser. His old law firm, Dorsey & Whitney, made him chairman of its Asia group. And he took positions on the corporate boards of BlackRock Funds, CNA Financial Corp., Dain Rauscher Corp., Northwest Airlines, St. Jude Medical Inc. and United HealthCare Corp.
Mondale said he will disclose personal financial information, but as of late Friday he had not done so.
Mondale rejects the criticism that his corporate involvement throws him out of step with working-class voters.
"You can't have a healthy state without healthy business," he said. "And you can't have a healthy state without employees. . . . Being able to resolve issues requires somebody who has walked both sides of the aisle."
Mondale's words ring true with Irving Weiser, chief executive of the brokerage firm RBC Dain Rauscher.
"If you've been vice president of the United States, lived overseas as an ambassador and gained experience in the private sector, it may not change who you are and what you are," Weiser said, "but it would give you a better understanding of how issues affect different constituents."
Mondale's track record helps neutralize any controversy, said Mike Erlandson, Minnesota DFL Party chair.
"I know that if Walter Mondale sat on any corporate board, the first thing he would be concerned about would be the workers," Erlandson said.
Mondale does agree on many major issues with Wellstone. He would have voted against a resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use force in Iraq without international support. He also pledged to fight for women's rights to abortion, saying, "I will vote against any nominees for justice on the Supreme Court who are not right on that issue."
He promised to carry on Wellstone's crusades to curb tax breaks for the wealthy, help "the little fella," stop the "mindless assault on our environment," and make corporations more accountable.
In a party that often moves like a herd of cats, some Wellstone loyalists still may sit out the election, said state Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis. But, she added, "There also are people who were afraid of the Wellstone message and will be much more comfortable with Mondale."
-- Sharon Schmickle is at sschmickle@startribune.com.
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