Walter Mondale

Walter Mondale
42nd Vice President of the United States
In office January 20, 1977 – January 20, 1981
President	Jimmy Carter
Preceded by	Nelson Rockefeller
Succeeded by	George H. W. Bush
United States Senator from Minnesota
In office December 30, 1964 – December 30, 1976
Preceded by	Hubert Humphrey
Succeeded by	Wendell Anderson
24th United States Ambassador to Japan
In office September 21, 1993 – December 15, 1996
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Michael Armacost
Succeeded by	Tom Foley
23rd Attorney General of Minnesota
In office 1960–1964
Governor	Orville Freeman Elmer Andersen Karl Rolvaag
Preceded by	Miles Lord
Succeeded by	Robert Mattson
Personal details
Born	Walter Frederick Mondale (1928-01-05) January 5, 1928 (age 84) Ceylon, Minnesota, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Joan Adams
Children	Theodore A. Mondale Eleanor Mondale (deceased) William Mondale
Alma mater	Macalester College University of Minnesota University of Minnesota Law School
Religion	Presbyterian
Signature
Military service
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1951–1953
Rank	Corporal
Unit	Fort Knox

Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (born January 5, 1928) is an American Democratic Party politician who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States (1977–1981) under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator from Minnesota (1964–1976). He was the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in the United States presidential election of 1984.

Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1951. He then served in the US Army in the Korean War before earning a law degree in 1956. He married Joan Adams in 1955. Working as a lawyer in Minneapolis, Mondale was elected to the position of attorney general in 1960. He was appointed US Senator in late 1964 as a member of the Democratic Party upon the resignation of Hubert Humphrey, and held that post until 1976. In the Senate, he supported fair housing, tax reform and the desegregation of schools.^{[not verified in body]} He opposed United States involvement in the Vietnam War.^{[not verified in body]}

In 1976, Carter, the Democratic presidential nominee, chose Mondale as his vice presidential running mate in the forthcoming election. The Carter/Mondale ticket defeated incumbent president Gerald Ford. Carter and Mondale's time in office was marred by a worsening economy, and although both were renominated by the Democratic Party, they lost the 1980 election to Republican Ronald Reagan.

In 1984, Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination and campaigned for a nuclear freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment and a reduction of US public debt. In the election, Mondale was defeated in a landslide by President Reagan, gaining electoral votes from only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

After the election, Mondale joined the Minnesota-based law firm of Dorsey & Whitney and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (1986–93), and was credited with successes in Poland and Hungary. President Bill Clinton appointed Mondale United States Ambassador to Japan in 1993; he retired in 1996. Since then, Mondale has returned to working at the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney and remains active in the Democratic Party.

Early life

Walter Frederick Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota, the son of Claribel Hope (née Cowan), a part-time music teacher, and Theodore Sigvaard Mondale, a Methodist minister.^[1][2][3] His father's family was Norwegian American,^[4] and his mother, the daughter of an immigrant from Ontario, was of Scottish and English descent.^[5] The surname "Mondale" comes from Mundal by Fjærland, in the Sogndal Commune of Norway. He attended public schools. His half-brother Lester Mondale was a Unitarian minister.

Mondale was educated at Macalester College in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota, where he earned his B.A. in Political Science, graduating in 1951.^[6] He did not have enough money to attend law school. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and served for two years at Fort Knox during the Korean War, reaching the rank of corporal. Through the support of the G.I. Bill, he was able to attend law school, and graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1956. While at law school he served on the Minnesota Law Review and as a law clerk in the Minnesota Supreme Court under Justice Thomas F. Gallagher. He began practicing law in Minneapolis, and continued to do so for four years before entering the political arena.^[7]

Entry into politics

Mondale became involved in national politics in the 1940s. At the age of 20, he was visible in Minnesota politics by helping organize Hubert Humphrey's successful Senate campaign in 1948. Minnesota Governor Orville Freeman appointed Mondale in the race for Minnesota Attorney General in 1960, filling the vacancy left by Miles Lord, who was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota by President John F. Kennedy. Mondale had just managed Freeman's successful gubernatorial campaign. Mondale was 32, and four years out of law school when he became attorney general of Minnesota. During his tenure as Minnesota Attorney General, the case Gideon v. Wainwright (which ultimately established the right of defendants in state courts to have a lawyer) was being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. When those saying that a lawyer wasn't required organized a Friend of the Court brief from some state Attorneys General for that position, Mondale organized a countering Friend of the Court brief from many more state Attorneys General, arguing that defendants must be allowed a lawyer. He served for two terms as attorney general. He also served as a member of the President’s Consumer Advisory Council from 1960 to 1964. At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Mondale played a major role in the proposed but ultimately unsuccessful compromise by which the national Democratic Party offered the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party two at-large seats.

U.S. Senator

This article is missing information about Mondale's stance on tax reform, school desegregation and the Viet Nam War, as given in the introduction. Please expand the primary text and the lead to include this information. (March 2011)

Senator Walter F. Mondale

On December 30, 1964, Mondale was appointed by Minnesota Governor Karl Rolvaag to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by Hubert Humphrey's resignation after being elected Vice President of the United States. Mondale was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1966, defeating Republican candidate Robert A. Forsythe, by 53.9% to 45.2%.

In 1972, Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern offered Mondale an opportunity to be his vice presidential running mate, which he declined.^{[citation needed]} That year, Mondale won reelection to the Senate with over 57% of the vote, even as President Nixon carried Minnesota. He served in the 88th, 89th, 90th, 91st, 92nd, 93rd, and 94th congresses.

Policies

Mondale worked hard to build up the center of the party on economic and social issues. Unlike his own father, a fervent liberal, he was not a crusader for the New Deal. Instead he realized the Democratic base (especially ethnic blue collar workers) was gradually moving to the right and he worked to keep their support.^[8] Mondale showed little or no interest in foreign policy until about 1974, when he realized that some knowledge was necessary if he had loftier aspirations than the Senate. He developed a centrist position, avoiding alignment with either the party's hawks (such as Henry M. Jackson) or its doves (such as George McGovern).^[9] He took a liberal position on civil rights issues, which proved acceptable in Minnesota, a state with "a miniscule black population."^[10] Mondale was a chief sponsor of the federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing and created HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity as the primary enforcer of the law.^{[citation needed]}

Committees

Mondale rotated on and off numerous committees, including the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee; the Finance Committee; the Labor and Public Welfare Committee; the Budget Committee; and the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. He also served as chairman of the Select Committee on Equal Education Opportunity and as chairman of the Intelligence Committee's Domestic Task Force. He additionally served as chairman of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee's subcommittee on Children and Youth, as well as chairman of the Senate subcommittee on social security financing.^[11]

Apollo 204 accident

In 1967, Mondale served on the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, then chaired by Clinton P. Anderson, when astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire on January 27 while testing the Apollo 204 spacecraft. NASA Administrator James E. Webb secured the approval of President Lyndon B. Johnson for NASA to internally investigate the cause of the accident according to its established procedures, subject to Congressional oversight. NASA's procedure called for the Deputy Administrator (and de facto general manager), Dr. Robert C. Seamans, to appoint and oversee an investigative panel.

In February, a reporter passed a leak to Mondale, of the existence of an internal NASA report issued in 1965 by Apollo program director Samuel C. Phillips, detailing management, cost, delivery and quality problems of the Apollo prime contractor North American Aviation. In the February 27 hearing, Mondale asked Webb if he knew of such a report. Webb had not yet seen the December 1965 written report, so he responded in the negative. Seamans had passed along to Webb, neither the written report, nor the briefing presentation made to him in January 1966 by Phillips and Phillips' boss, Manned Space Flight Administrator George Mueller.^[12]

Both Seamans and Mueller had also been called to testify at this session. Mueller denied the report's existence, even though he must have been well aware of it, as he had appended his own strongly-worded letter to the copy sent to North American president Lee Atwood.^[13]

But Seamans was afraid Mondale might somehow be in possession of a copy (which he was not), so he admitted that NASA often reviewed its contractors' performance, with both positive and negative results, but that this was nothing extraordinary. Under repeated questioning from Mondale, Webb promised that he would investigate whether this "Phillips Report" existed, and if so, to see if a controlled release could be made to the Congress. Immediately after the hearing, Webb saw the Phillips report for the first time.^[12]

The controversy spread to both houses of Congress, and grew (through the efforts of three of Mondale's fellow committee members, Republicans Margaret Chase Smith, Edward Brooke and Charles H. Percy) to include the second-guessing of NASA's original selection in 1961 of North American as the prime Apollo spacecraft contractor, which Webb became forced to defend. The House NASA oversight committee, which was conducting its own hearings and had picked up on the controversy, was ultimately given a copy of the Phillips report.

While the Committee as a whole, believed that NASA should have informed Congress of the Phillips review results in 1966, its final report issued on January 30, 1968, concluded (as had NASA's own accident investigation completed on April 5, 1967), that "the findings of the [Phillips] task force had no effect on the accident, did not lead to the accident, and were not related to the accident." Yet Mondale wrote a minority opinion accusing NASA of "evasiveness, ... lack of candor, ... patronizing attitude exhibited toward Congress, ... refusal to respond fully and forthrightly to legitimate congressional inquiries, and ... solicitous concern for corporate sensitivities at a time of national tragedy".^[14]

Mondale explained his actions in a 2001 interview: "... I think that by forcing a public confrontation about these heretofore secret and deep concerns about the safety and the management of the program, it forced NASA to restructure and reorganize the program in a way that was much safer."^[12]

Church intelligence committee

This section requires expansion.

In 1975 Mondale served on Frank Church's Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which investigated alleged abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Vice Presidency

Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter, in front of Presidential helicopter Marine One in January 1979

When Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for president in 1976, he chose Mondale as his running mate. The ticket was narrowly elected on November 2, 1976, and Mondale was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1977. He became the fourth vice president in eight years, the other three being: Spiro Agnew (1969–73), Gerald Ford (1973-1974), and Nelson Rockefeller (1974–77).

Under Carter, Mondale traveled extensively throughout the nation and the world advocating the administration's foreign policy. Mondale was the first vice president to have an office in the White House, and established the concept of "activist Vice President". Mondale established the tradition of weekly lunches with the president, which continues to this day. More important, he expanded the vice president's role from that of figurehead to presidential advisor, full-time participant, and troubleshooter for the administration. Subsequent vice presidents have followed this model in the administrations in which they serve.^[15]

1980 Election

Carter and Mondale were renominated at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, but soundly lost to the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. That year, Mondale opened the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York.

Carter and Walter Mondale are the longest-living post-presidential team in American history. On December 11, 2007, they had been out of office for 26 years and 325 days, surpassing the former record established by President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, who both died on July 4, 1826.

Post Vice-Presidency

Presidential nominee of 1984

Vice President Mondale bust from the Senate collection

After losing the 1980 election, Mondale returned briefly to the practice of law at Winston and Strawn, a large Chicago-based law firm, but he had no intention of staying out of politics for long.

Mondale ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1984 election, and from the early going, he was the frontrunner. His opposition included Rev. Jesse Jackson and Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. Hart pulled an upset by winning the New Hampshire primary in March, but Mondale had a large portion of the party leadership behind him. To great effect, Mondale used the Wendy's slogan "Where's the beef?" to describe Hart's policies as lacking depth. Jackson, widely regarded as the first serious African-American candidate for President, held on longer, but Mondale clinched the nomination with the majority of delegates on the first ballot.

At the Democratic Convention, Mondale chose U.S. Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York as his running mate, making her the first woman nominated for that position by a major party. Aides later said that Mondale was determined to establish a precedent with his vice presidential candidate, considering San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, also a female, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American, and San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, a Mexican American, as other finalists for the nomination.^[16] Others preferred Senator Lloyd Bentsen because he would appeal to the Deep South, or even nomination rival Gary Hart. Ferraro, as a Catholic, came under fire from some Catholic Church leaders for being pro-choice. Much more controversy erupted over her changing positions regarding the release of her husband's tax returns, and her own ethics record in the House. Ferraro was on the defensive throughout much of the campaign, largely negating her breakthrough as the first woman on a major national ticket, and the first Italian American to reach that level in American politics.

When he made his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Mondale said: "By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."^[17] While this was meant to show that Mondale would be honest with voters, it was largely interpreted as a campaign pledge to raise taxes to spend on domestic programs, which was unappealing to many voters.

Mondale ran a liberal campaign, supporting a nuclear freeze and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). He spoke against Reagan's economic policies and in support of reducing federal budget deficits. However, he was going up against a popular incumbent and his campaign was widely considered ineffective. Also, he was perceived as supporting the poor at the expense of the middle class. Southern whites and northern blue collar workers who usually voted Democratic switched their support to Reagan because they credited him with the economic boom and saw him as strong on national security issues.

In the first televised debate, Mondale performed unexpectedly well, questioning Reagan's age and capacity to endure the grueling demands of the presidency (Reagan was the oldest person to serve as president—73 at the time—while Mondale was 56). In the next debate on October 21, 1984, Reagan deflected the issue by quipping, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

In the election, Mondale was defeated in a landslide, winning only the District of Columbia and his home state of Minnesota and even there his margin of victory was fewer than 3,800 votes,^[18] securing only 13 electoral votes to Reagan's 525. The result was the worst electoral college defeat for any Democratic Party candidate in history, and the worst for any major-party candidate since Alf Landon's loss to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.

Mondale received 37,577,352 votes—a total of 40.6% of the popular vote in the election. Mondale received 40-49% in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Private citizen and ambassador

Walter Mondale as U.S. Ambassador to Japan

Following the election, Mondale returned to private law practice, with Dorsey & Whitney in Minnesota in 1987. From 1986 to 1993, Mondale was chairman of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, he was U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996, chaired a bipartisan group to study campaign finance reform, and was Clinton's special envoy to Indonesia in 1998.

Until his appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Mondale was a Distinguished University Fellow in Law and Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, at the University of Minnesota. In 1990, Mondale established the Mondale Policy Forum at the Humphrey Institute. The forum has brought together leading scholars and policymakers for annual conferences on domestic and international issues. He also served on nonprofit boards of directors for the Guthrie Theatre Foundation, Mayo Foundation, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Diogenes Institute of Higher Learning, Prince Hall Masonic Temple, RAND Corporation and the University of Minnesota Foundation. His corporate board memberships included BlackRock Advantage Term Trust and other BlackRock Mutual Funds, Cargill Incorporated, CNA Financial Corporation, the Encyclopædia Britannica, First Financial Fund and other Prudential Mutual Funds, Northwest Airlines and United HealthCare Corporation.

Mondale spoke before the Senate on September 4, 2002, when he delivered a lecture on his service, with commentary on the transformation of the office of the Vice President during the Carter administration, the Senate cloture rule for ending debate, and his view on the future of the Senate in U.S. political history. The lecture was a part of a continuing Senate "Leaders Lecture Series" that ran from 1998 to 2002.^[19]

2002 Senate election and beyond

Former Vice President Mondale giving a lecture in the Senate in 2002

In 2002, Democratic US Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who was running for re-election, died in a plane crash just 11 days before the November 5 election. At the age of 74, Mondale replaced Wellstone on the ballot, at the urging of Wellstone's relatives. This Senate seat was the one that Mondale himself had held, before resigning to become Vice President in 1977.

During his debate with the Republican nominee, former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, Mondale emphasized his own experience in foreign affairs while painting Coleman as a finger-in-the-wind opportunist. "We've seen you shift around, Norman," Mondale said, alluding to Coleman's past as an anti-war college activist and, more recently, as a Democrat who had changed his party allegiance to the GOP while serving as mayor of St. Paul.

In a major upset, Mondale narrowly lost the election, finishing with 1,067,246 votes (47.34%) to Coleman's 1,116,697 (49.53%) out of 2,254,639 votes cast, earning him the unique distinction of having lost a statewide election in all 50 states as the nominee of a major party (he lost the other 49 in the 1984 Presidential Election).

The election was also marked by the controversy surrounding Wellstone's memorial event, which many critics, including then Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, considered to have been overly partisan.

Upon conceding defeat, 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."^[20]

In 2004 Mondale became co-chairman of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Right to Counsel Committee.^[21] He endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for the Presidency of the United States and supported her campaign for the White House in 2008.^[22] On June 3, 2008, following the final primary contests, Mondale switched his endorsement to Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who had clinched the nomination the previous evening.

Following the U.S. Presidential election of 2004 and the mid-term elections of 2006, Mondale is seen talking with Al Franken about the possibility of the latter running for Norm Coleman's U.S. Senate seat in 2008 in the documentary Al Franken: God Spoke.^[23] In the film, Mondale encourages Franken to run, but cautions him, saying that Coleman's allies and the Republican Party were going to look for anything they could use against him. Franken ultimately ran and won the 2008 Senate election by 312 votes after the election results had been contested in court by Coleman until June 30, 2009.^[24]

Family

Mondale in 2010

His wife, Joan Mondale, is a national advocate for the arts and was the Honorary Chairman of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities during the Carter Administration.

The Mondales' eldest son, Theodore A. "Ted" Mondale, is an entrepreneur and the CEO of Nazca Solutions, a technology fulfillment venture. He is also a former Minnesota state senator. In 1998, Mondale sought the Democratic primary nomination for Minnesota governor. Mondale, a fiscal moderate who had distanced himself from labor, lost in the primary.

The Mondales' daughter, Eleanor, was a television personality. She also had radio talk shows in Chicago, and a long running program on WCCO (AM) in Minneapolis. She died of brain cancer at her home in Minnesota on September 17, 2011, at the age of 51.^[25]

Walter Mondale continues to maintain a residence near Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. Mondale is a Presbyterian. He enjoys fishing, reading Shakespeare and historical accounts, barbecuing, skiing, watching Monty Python, and playing tennis.^[26]

Mondale has maintained strong ties to the University of Minnesota Law School, which named its new residence on the West Bank of the Mississippi "Mondale Hall". He contributes cameo appearances to the Law School's annual T.O.R.T. ("Theater of the Relatively Talentless") presentations, and has allowed his name to be used as the nickname of the school's hockey team: "The Fighting Mondales."

In popular culture

• Bill Murray played Mondale on Saturday Night Live in the late 1970s, as did Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz in the mid-1980s.
• Berke Breathed's Bloom County comic strip included a story around Bill the Cat's run for president, in which Mondale is briefly Bill's running mate. In another story, the Meadow Party is depressed because an opinion poll puts Bill and Opus "just above Mondale, just below Pitted Prunes."
• In Futurama Season 1 Episode 11 ("Mars University"), Amy Wong says, "Boring! Let's hear about Walter Mondale already" to a professor who looks like Mondale. In Season 2 Episode 7 ("A Head In The Polls"), Mondale's Head is in the "Closet Of Presidential Losers" within the Head Museum.
• One of Mondale's ads for his presidential campaign was featured on The Daily Show on March 3, 2008 in a satirical comparison to one of Hillary Clinton's campaign ads.
• In the Simpsons episode "Lisa's First Word", Lisa Simpson reads a headline that describes Mondale's "Where's the beef?" comment during the 1984 Presidential Election. Homer laughs approvingly and remarks "No wonder he won Minnesota!" In the episode "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington", a janitor who looks like Mondale helps newly elected Congressman Krusty the Clown get a bill to become law using underhanded methods. In "Bart vs. Australia", the family flees from Australia to a "laundry ship" named USS Walter Mondale.
• In the American Dad episode, "Stan Knows Best", Stan Smith says "Rubharb" when Hayley moves in with her boyfriend, Jeff. He claimed the word was a subliminal order he supposedly implanted into her subconscious to kill Mondale. However, it is revealed that the word was implanted into Steve's mind. In "The Best Christmas Story Never", Stan goes back in time and alters history. After becoming President instead of Ronald Reagan, Mondale quickly surrenders the US to the Soviet Union.
• In an episode of The O.C., "The Case of the Franks", Sandy Cohen, in a flashback, is campaigning for Mondale's 1984 presidency run. He attempts to give future wife Kirsten a campaign button and states that he would tell her why Mondale and Ferraro wouldn't win, but campaigning for them felt right.
• In the HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Mondale is portrayed by actor John Slattery.

Published works

The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics, Mondale's memoir, was published in 2010; Twelve Years and Thirteen Days: Remembering Paul and Sheila Wellstone, co-written with Terry Gydesen, was published in 2003; Crisis and Opportunity in a Changing Japan, co-written with William Regis Farrell, was published in 1999; and The Accountability of Power: Toward a Responsible Presidency, was written in 1976.

Norwegian ancestry

Mondale has always maintained strong ties to his ancestral Norway. His family surname was originally Mundal and it originated in Mundal, Fjærland.^[27] Upon entering the Senate in 1964 he took over the seat of vice president Hubert Humphrey, another Norwegian-American. In later years Mondale has served on the executive committee of the Peace Prize Forum, an annual conference co-sponsored by the Norwegian Nobel Institute and five Midwestern colleges of Norwegian heritage. During Norway's Centennial Celebration in 2005, he chaired the committee to promote and develop cultural activities between Norway and Norwegian-American organizations.

While he was in office, Twin Cities Public Television produced a documentary about him entitled Walter Mondale: There's a Fjord in Your Past, a play on the well-known advertising slogan, "There's a Ford in Your Future."

On December 5, 2007, Norwegian minister of foreign affairs Jonas Gahr Støre announced that Walter Mondale would be named Honorary Consul-General of Norway, representing the Norwegian state in Minnesota.^[28]

Electoral history

Records

In the Walter F. Mondale Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society, digital content is available for researcher use.^[29] Researchers will find content that includes, but is not limited to: speech files, handwritten notes, memoranda, annotated briefings, schedules, correspondence, and visual materials. The entire Walter F. Mondale collection includes senatorial, vice presidential, ambassadorial, political papers and campaign files, and personal papers of the United States Senator from Minnesota (1964–1976), Vice President of the United States (1977–1981), Ambassador to Japan (1993–1996), and Special Envoy to Indonesia (1998), documenting most aspects of Mondale's six-decade career, including all of his public offices, campaigns, and Democratic Party and other non-official activities. Digital selections from this manuscript collection were made based on user and researcher interest, historic significance, and copyright status.

This project was made possible with the generous help of the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People grant.

References

Further reading

• Gillon, Steven M. The Democrats’ Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy (1992)
• Mondale, Walter. The Accountability of Power (1975)
• Mondale, Walter. The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics (2010).

External links

	Biography portal
	Government of the United States portal
	Minnesota portal
	Politics portal

• Congressional biography
• Senate Leaders Lecture Series Address
• Minnesota Public Radio: Coleman, Mondale debate on eve of election (November 4, 2002) – featuring audio of the 2002 debate
• Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs: The Mondale Lectures on Public Service
• Great Norwegians
• Two Views from Pennsylvania Avenue
• List of New York Times articles on Mondale
• Senator Mondale transfers money from NASA to social programs using political maneuvers
• AmericanHeritage.com / Lost in Space What Went Wrong with NASA?
• Walter F. Mondale: An Inventory of His Papers, including his Vice Presidential Papers, at the Minnesota Historical Society

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v t e Cabinet of President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)   Cabinet Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (1977–1980) Edmund Muskie (1980–1981) Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal (1977–1979) G. William Miller (1979–1981) Secretary of Defense Harold Brown (1977–1981) Attorney General Griffin Bell (1977–1979) Benjamin Civiletti (1979–1981) Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus (1977–1981) Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bergland (1977–1981) Secretary of Commerce Juanita M. Kreps (1977–1980) Philip Klutznick (1980–1981) Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall (1977–1981) Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph A. Califano, Jr. (1977–1979) Patricia Roberts Harris (1979–1979) Secretary of Health and Human Services Patricia Roberts Harris (1979–1981) Secretary of Education Shirley M. Hufstedler (1979–1981) Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Patricia Roberts Harris (1977–1979) Maurice "Moon" Landrieu (1979–1981) Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams (1977–1979) Neil Goldschmidt (1979–1981) Secretary of Energy James R. Schlesinger (1977–1979) Charles Duncan, Jr. (1979–1981)   Cabinet-level Vice President Walter Mondale (1977–1981) Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young (1977 – 1979) Donald McHenry (1979 – 1981) Director of the Office of Management and Budget Thomas "Bert" Lance (1977) James T. McIntyre (1978 – 1981) Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Charles Schultze (1977 – 1981) Advisor to the President on National Security Affairs Zbigniew Brzezinski (1977 – 1981)