A Have-Clout, Will-Travel Veep

It is only 2 o'clock in the afternoon, but the Vice President has already been in the Oval Office three times for private chats with his boss. At the moment, he is on the phone to a key Senator, reminding him firmly but pleasantly of the importance of a bill that seems to be in trouble. A foreign policy adviser is just leaving after discussing the ten-day trip that will take Fritz Mondale through a series of meetings this week and next with the heads of state of Portugal, Spain, Yugoslavia, Austria, Great Britain and South Africa.

Mondale will deliver a tough message to South African Prime Minister Vorster: either change the basic apartheid policy or the U.S. will take concrete action against the regime. Among the possible actions: tightening visa requirements, cutting back credits to South Africa from the Export-Import Bank, severing links between U.S. and South African intelligence agencies.

Past Vice Presidents would be amazed and envious of Walter Frederick Mondale. Here is a Veep not only exercising power but reveling in it, surrounded by scurrying aides and history in the making. In the job that one of his 41 predecessors (John Nance Garner) compared unfavorably to a pitcher of warm spit, Mondale claims to be having the time of his life. He is a top adviser who is consulted, listened to and liked by the President: One measure of his closeness with his boss is their good-natured exchange of gibes. At the Gridiron Dinner, Mondale remarked how the press had missed the fact that the vice presidency has become the most important office in the land. "For instance, on Inauguration Day, I rode to the White House in a chauffeured limousine; the President had to walk. Whenever I take a trip, an aide carries my luggage; the President carries his own." Carter agreed that a "fine relationship has been established between Fritz Mondale and myself," adding, "And then there were the foreign policy remarks tonight by the acting Vice President." Jests Mondale: "This is the imperial vice presidency."

No Bossing. Carter apparently meant what he said about having a strong No. 2 man. He also needs Mondale as a link to the liberals in the Democratic Party who fret about the President's aversion to new spending programs. Mondale, moreover, enjoys the unqualified support of Hamilton Jordan, Carter's top aide, who originally backed him for the vice presidency. "In the past," says Jordan, "a President's staff has been able to boss the Vice President around. No one would dream of doing that with Mondale. I consider him my boss, like I consider Carter my boss."

As a twelve-year veteran of the U.S.

Senate, Mondale was determined to play a substantive, not a ceremonial, role in the White House. Well aware of an old Washington rule--power is bred by proximity to power--he secured an office in the West Wing between Jordan's and that of National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Thus positioned at the crossroads of foreign and domestic policy, he seldom visits his official quarters across the street from the White House in the Executive Office Building, which he has dubbed "Baltimore" because of its remoteness from real authority.

No one else in the Administration sees more of the President, a remarkable claim for a Vice President to be able to make. One day Mondale logged 14 hours with Carter, a total that even he concedes was a "bit too much." He receives a steady flow of memos and briefing papers from the Oval Office, and sometimes they bear a handwritten note: "Be sure Fritz sees this." At Carter's blanket invitation, he sits in on every important meeting. Foreign heads of state have noted with surprise that he turns up even at what are supposed to be one-to-one sessions with the President. Occasionally when Carter is busy, Mondale presides over meetings, though his aides are careful to say that he is only a "stand-in." When a Mondale adviser carelessly referred to him as the "acting President," his constitutional impertinence was hastily corrected.

Once when President Eisenhower was asked to name some important decisions for which Vice President Nixon was responsible, Ike said he would need a week to think about it. Already, Carter could tick off a long list of accomplishments by his Veep. Two of Carter's Cabinet appointments were Mondale suggestions: Joe Califano at Health, Education and Welfare, and Bob Bergland (a fellow Minnesotan) at Agriculture. Mondale initiated the election reform bill, which would abolish the Electoral College, permit registration on Election Day, and extend public financing to congressional races. He successfully backed increased aid to education and day-care and child-nutrition programs.

Of course, Mondale's advice is not always taken. He argued against dropping the $50-rebate proposal, for which he had lobbied hard, but could not prevail against Carter's eventual misgivings. "Sure, Mondale approaches these things with a different philosophy," says Jordan, "and he strengthens us that way. It wasn't just Mondale who lost on the rebate. I was opposed to dropping it too."

Still Afloat. Mondale is easygoing, unpretentious and witty, qualities that endear him to his former colleagues on the Hill.* As president of the Senate, he is proving to be a skilled mediator between the two branches of Government. Last week, for instance, he got on the phone to Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell, whose vote was needed to report the Election Day registration bill out of committee. Though he opposes the measure, Pell agreed to cast the deciding vote so that the bill would reach the floor. With timely intervention, Mondale also rescued the consumer protection bill from being bottled up in committee.

No one understands better than Mondale that he serves at the President's pleasure; if he somehow runs afoul of Carter, he could end up in that special purgatory that is reserved for nearly all Vice Presidents. Even the most promising Veeps have found themselves abruptly shelved as conditions change. Gerald Ford gave Nelson Rockefeller important duties. But when Rocky seemed to be a political liability in Ford's battle with Ronald Reagan for the 1976 G.O.P. nomination, he was jettisoned. At the moment, Mondale is buoyantly afloat. When Fritz flashes his smile, everyone knows he is also laughing on the inside. A happy Vice President, however temporary his condition, is a historical rarity to be cherished.

* His tongue-in-cheek explanation of why Carter chose him for the ticket: "Muskie arrived in Plains and asked to see a peanut tree. John Glenn said: 'I just love blue-eyed peas.' And Frank Church declared that although he was new to Georgia, a favorite ancestor had traveled the state--in Sherman's army. By the time I got there, Jimmy grabbed me and said: 'If you'll just keep your mouth shut. I'll pick you.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.