Walter (Fritz) Mondale

• Vice President to:      Jimmy Carter - Democrat, from Georgia.
  
  
  • Jimmy Carter served 1977 - 1981. He is 81, as of May, 2006
    
    
• Dates Served: Mondale served as Vice President from 1977 - 1981.
  
• Political Party: Mondale is a Democrat, from Minnesota.
  
• Born: 1928.
  
• Age: Mondale is 80, as of May, 2008.
  
• The presidential opponent during the 1976 campaign was:
  
  
  • Gerald Ford - Republican - Incumbant President
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1976:
  
  
  • The issue this year was the scandals of the previous 2 Administrations and Ford's pardon of Nixon. Ford had sealed his fate when he pardoned Nixon of all crimes committed while in office, but he gave it a go anyway. He tried to paint Carter as unclear on the issues and not qualified to lead the nation. But Ford dug himself into an even deeper hole when he debated Carter and stated that he didn't believe that there was any Soviet domination in the Eastern European nations at the time. He had help digging his hole from his Vice Presidential candidate, Bob Dole, who argued that since a Democrat had been in office during the outbreak of every war in the 20th Century, Democrats were therefore responsible for all modern wars. (He apparently didn't consider the fact that Republicans had been in office during all of the economic depressions and recessions of the 20th Century up till that time, which by his logic would have blamed his own party for all economic slumps). Carter won the election, but by a relatively small margin.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Walter Mondale:
  
  
  • Religious affiliation: Mondale is a Presbyterian, although his father was a Methodist preacher. Walter's public comments on religion have been rare, preferring a to keep his views to himself. The comments he has made have been general, such as this one made in 1984: "Whatever his private beliefs and religious practice, a president must be the guardian of the laws which ensure America's religious diversity". Politics is Walter's public religion, and his private religion is, well, private.
    
    
  • Walter was nicknamed "Crazy Legs" in High School, because of his skill in football.
    
    
  • After serving in the Korean War, Mondale earned his law degree in Minnesota, in 1956. While a student, he had worked on Hubert Humphrey's campaign for Senate in 1948.
    
    
  • In 1960 Walter was nominated State Attorney General, serving until 1964.
    
    
  • When Hubert Humphrey became Vice President in 1965, Mondale was appointed to serve out the rest of his term in the Senate, being re-elected twice. He served in the Senate, representing Minnesota till 1977. He developed a consistently liberal voting record, supporting most of President Johnson's initiatives on Civil Rights, welfare, health, and education.
    
    
  • In 1976 he ran for the Democratic nomination for President, but washed out early in the campaign. After Jimmy Carter won the nomination he selected Mondale as his running mate, and went on to win the election.
    
    
  • During his term in the little chair, Mondale worked closely with President Carter on many policy-making details, more so than traditionally assigned to VPs.
    
    
  • Walter was the first Vice President to reside at the official home of the Vice President, the US Naval Observatory at 34th. Street in Washington. In 1974 Congress decided to evict the previous resident, the Superintendent of the US Naval Observatory and sentence the Vice President to live in it during his term. At the time of the decision, Gerald Ford would have been eligible to move in, but the Nixon resignation changed his job title and he got to move into a better house. Ford's Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, was eligible to move in but he already owned a home in DC which was bigger and much nicer, so he declined. Therefore it was left to Walter Mondale to be the first official Vice Presidential resident, in 1977.
    
    Prior to this, there was no official residence for the Vice President, with housing found on an ad hoc basis, often in hotels in Washington. For a long time the VP didn't even have his own office. Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's Vice, shared an office with a secretary. No respect.
    
    
  • After leaving office, Mondale ran for President as the Democratic candidate against Ronald Reagan in 1984. Prior to the nominating Convention, Mondale's campaign slogan against his Democratic rivals, Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson, was "Where's the Beef?", a truly erudite political postulation. He was the first Presidential candidate to nominate a woman as his running mate, New York Representative Geraldine Ferarro. But he was trounced on election day, loosing massively against the unstopable Reagan. He didn't do well in the debates with the ever-affable Reagan, and lost by a painful 59% to 41% of the popular election and by a truly woeful 525 to 13 Electoral votes margin. Basically, he was taken to the cleaners.
    
    
  • After his failed bid for the presidency, Mondale returned to his private law practice, interrupted by a 3-year term as ambassador to Japan, being appointed to the post by President Clinton, serving from 1993 to 1996.
    
    
  • Six years later, on October 25, 2002, one of Minnesota's two Senators, Paul Wellstone, was killed along with his wife and daughter when their small plane crashed, only 10 days prior to Congressional elections. Five days later the Democratic Party in Minnesota recruited Mondale out of retirement and convinced him to re-enter public service and replace Senator Wellstone on the ticket. He accepted, returning to the campaign trail for the first time in 18 years, launching a last-minute race through the state, a campaign his supporters called "The Fritz Blitz". However, on election-day he lost to his opponent, 47% to 50%. Close, but not enough. Back to the golf-course for Fritz.
    
    
  • On May 24th, 2006, Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter became the longest-living ex-Vice and ex-President team in history. The previous record for longest post-White House life was Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, but the mantle was now handed to Jimmy & Fritz. When asked to comment on their place in the record-books Carter said "All you have to do is live a long life and choose a healthy vice president."

Notable Events during his Vice Presidency:

• The full pardon of all Draft Dodgers, January 1977. On his first day in office, President Carter fulfilled his campaign promise to pardon all of the approx. 10,000 draft dodgers who had fled during the Vietnam War. The pardon didn't apply to soldiers who had deserted. This time many former dodgers accepted the pardon, since there were no strings attached.
  
  
• Panama Canal turned over to Panama, Sept. 1977. With negotiations having begun under President Lyndon Johnson, a treaty was finally signed in 1977 that formally turned over the Canal Zone - the area of land on either side of the Canal - to the government of Panama. The US retained the right to continue operating the Canal itself until December 31, 1999, at which date the Canal itself was turned over.
  
  
• "The Love Boat" premiers, on Sept. 24, 1977.
  
  
• The snowboard is invented by Jake Burton, in 1978 in Vermont.
  
  
• The Camp David Accords, March 1979. President Carter invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the United States to hammer out a peace treaty between the 2 countries. (Israel had acquired the Egyptian Sinai desert as a result of the Yom Kippur war in 1973) They convened a meeting at the Camp David retreat in Maryland and spent 13 days working out a treaty in which Israel would withdraw from the Sinai and return it to Egypt, as well as making some commitments to granting limited autonomy to Palestinians. The treaty was signed that officially ended the 31-year state of war that had existed between the 2 countries. It took place amid much fanfare and Carter saw his most visible success as President. Anwar Sadat was assassinated 2 years later by Right Wing factions in his government outraged by his "collusion" with Israel.
  
  
• Formal diplomatic relations established with China. In 1979 the US established full formal diplomatic relations with Communist China and removed the US forces that had been stationed in Taiwan. Taiwan was now no longer an alternate China, in the eyes of the US.
  
  
• SALT II Treaty, June 1979. Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a treaty that further promised to reduce arms on both sides. However the treaty was never approved by Congress, due to widespread opposition to what were perceived as stipulations dangerous to the US. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 the treaty was scrapped.
  
  
• Invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, in 1979. On Feb 14, 1979 the US ambassador to Afghanistan was murdered in the capitol, Kabul, resulting in the US cutting off all aid to the country. Afghanistan was being besieged from within by a growing Islamic revolution, and the government at the time was a puppet state of the Soviet Union. Later that year the Soviet military invaded the country to try and prop up the country's government. While the US didn't like having its ambassador killed, it was much more disturbed by any Soviet military movements outside of its borders, and therefore opposed the Soviet invasion. President Carter suspended all high-tech and grain sales to the USSR and joined 63 other countries in boycotting the Olympics that were being held that year in Moscow. The Soviets fought for 9 years and accomplished nothing against the countless bands of fundamentalist Islamic rebels. They eventually began withdrawing from the country in 1988, defeated, and left Afghanistan to years of Civil War.
  
  
• Three Mile Island Meltdown, March 1979. At a nuclear power plant located at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, a cooling system in one of the reactors failed and caused the nuclear core to heat up uncontrollably, creating the risk of massive radiation leakage. Several very tense days of confusion followed, but disaster was avoided. President Carter ordered a temporary halt to all future nuclear power plant construction while preventative measures were explored.
  
  
• "MASH" airs episode in which Radar goes home, on Oct. 8, 1979.
  
  
• US hostages taken in Iran, Nov. 4, 1979. In January of 1979 the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, had fled his country during an Islamic uprising, and had ended up in the United States to receive medical treatment. The Islamic militants in Iran wanted him returned to stand trial, so they stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took over 60 US citizens hostage. Their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, ordered all women and black hostages released, but the remaining 52 Americans were held for over a year, used as pawns in a geopolitical game between the two countries.
  
  In November of 1979 President Carter ordered an oil embargo against Iran and froze all Iranian assets in US banks. In December all 183 Iranian diplomats in the US were expelled. On April 24, 1980, Carter authorized a rescue mission in which US Special Forces were to fly into the country and storm the embassy. But the mission was an embarassing failure, with 3 helicopters malfunctioning and 2 aircraft colliding in the desert, killing 8 US soldiers. The mission was abandoned, and the bodies left behind, which were grabbed by the Iranians, hanging them outside of government windows in a show of triumph, and then separated the hostages throughout the city to foil any future rescue attempt.
  
  The Shah died while in Egypt, on July 27, 1980, and there were hopes that the hostages would be released. But the Ayatollah first demanded the return of all of the Shah's assets, the unfreezing of Iranian assets in US banks, and a pledge by the US to never again pick on Iran. Meanwhile, in neighboring Iraq, Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion onto Iranian soil to reclaim some land he felt belonged to him. With other priorities to attend to now, the American hostages were turned over by the militants to the Iranian government and, with Algeria mediating, a deal was worked out between Iran and the US where the hostages would be returned in exchange for the unfreezing of Iranian assets in US banks. The hostages were released on January 29, 1981 after exactly 444 days, on the very day Carter turned over the reigns of power to Ronald Reagan, who had won the election the previous November. (The Iranian assets have yet to be unfrozen, as of January, 2008, 28 years later.)