'Privy to All the Facts and Options'

In an interview with TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angela shortly before his departure last week on his latest diplomatic mission, Vice President Walter Mondale reflected on the duties, rewards and hazards of his often disparaged office. Excerpts:

ON HAVING ENOUGH TO DO. Arthur Schlesinger [the historian] wrote me a letter congratulating me on the election, but he also said, "I send you my prayers. It is the most incurably frustrating office ever conceived by man." I wrote him and thanked him but--knock on wood--at this point it has been entirely different from the traditional experience.

We really haven't had any problems in terms of my staffs relations with the President's, which couldn't be better, or my personal relationship with him, or the scope of assignments I have been given, both foreign and domestic. It is not a case of not having enough to do of significance, but how to do everything you are asked to do that is of significance.

ON LIVING WITH JIMMY. He is a conservative, and he never kidded anybody about it. He says that he hopes for a balanced budget in 1981 in the context of a fully employed economy. I can live with that. We are just putting together the budget for the next four years. In order to make some of the tough choices that have to be made if we are going to achieve welfare reform or tax reform or reorganization of Government, I think the President has to establish some pretty rigid rules. He is trying to force these agencies--and I enthusiastically support that--to start from the first dollar up and see what they can do better with the money we have. I have always been offended by waste.

My relationship to the President cannot be on the basis that he does what he is told. Obviously he is the President. What I have the right to do--and he has given me completely--is to be privy to all the facts and options being considered, to participate in the advisory groups and have access to him personally to make my arguments. I have lost some and I have won some, but the course of his Administration does not surprise me.

ON WORKING WITH CONGRESS.

First of all, if you look at the Hill, I think there is more support than some people are saying. In the good old days with a Republican in the White House, we could always have a fight and get credit for it.

Now it is hard for someone like George [McGovern, who recently attacked the President's economic policies] to get credit for fights. Many of President Carter's proposals are liberal in concept. Look at the record: a $4 billion tax cut for lowest-income people, repairing the Social Security system, $10 billion in public works and public jobs, grants to help the most troubled center cities, upping the money for education.

We just don't have a lot of big money today. Even the progressives have to realize that. We don't have billions to spend on all this stuff. I wish we did, but we don't. So you have to live with the realities of a tough situation.

ON DEALING WITH AFRICA. What the President did was to ask me to focus on Africa and advise him. We have so many political areas, principally southern Africa, that require us to concentrate on them to see if we can devise some approaches that make sense. With Prime Minister Vorster, I will be discussing Namibia, Rhodesia and South Africa. This is going to be an in-depth attempt to deal with specifics with Vorster.

I will not be a substitute for [Secretary of State] Cyrus Vance or [U.N. Ambassador] Andrew Young. Those responsibilities all stay in place. There was an impression that I was moving in to take over from those other agencies. Not so.

ON BUDGETEERING. I am involved as an adviser. I do not try to take a functional role. Usually ten or twelve policy questions have to be answered before you can come forth with numbers. Do you have a B-l bomber or don't you? Do you have an additional aircraft carrier or don't you? What I will do is go through this stuff and then suggest to the President what I think ought to be done.

ON THE VEEP'S MANDATE. So far, I have been given a freedom to roam. I think, first of all, that President Carter is not threatened by the Vice President. He told me when we met in July that he had just been reading some books on the presidency. One of the things that struck him was how Presidents seemed to feel threatened by the presence of a Vice President, as though he were a threat to their constitutional powers or reminded them of their mortality.

But he didn't feel that way. He told me: "No one can take my constitutional powers away from me. I don't feel threatened. If the Vice President can help me, that helps him. But more important, it helps me. So I want an active Vice President. I want one who works closely with me. I want one who is totally familiar with the same information I have because that is the only way you can help me."

Finally he said, "If a transition should occur. I don't want my successor to spend two months getting briefed. I want that person to take over immediately." And that is exactly the way it is working.

ON SPEAKING UP. We've been here more than three months and the President has never asked me to give a speech. He has never asked me to say anything. He has never asked to clear a speech. I have given speeches about energy and human rights and about our Administration. But I have tried to avoid the sycophant's role that persuades no one and by implication demeans the office and undermines sober treatment of the issues.

ON KEEPING COOL. I have not yet felt the President's anger. I'm told there is a blue vein that starts throbbing. I haven't seen it yet, though I suspect it is there. But I'm still alive.

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