What Ever Happened to Fritz?

He's right where he has been --very much at Carter's side What ever happened to ... Lyndon, Hubert, Spiro, Jerry, Nelson ...

Fritz? At one or more points in their vice-presidential careers, the question has been asked about nearly all of them.

Last week it was Walter Mondale's turn.

The question was not entirely unreasonable. Mondale had begun his tenure as a highly visible, globe-trotting emissary of the new President. But in the past weeks he has virtually dropped out of public sight, most noticeably during the Carter Administration's crisis over Bert Lance.

As they were peppered with questions about Mondale, Jimmy Carter and his aides insisted that Fritz was where he has always been--at the President's right hand. Carter even telephoned the Washington bureau chiefs of both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times to refute any speculation that Mondale had been downgraded from his influential role as what Carter termed "the deputy President." At his press conference last week, Carter said he met Mondale more often in the course of a day than all of his aides combined. Indeed, White House logs showed that Mondale had spent a remarkable 41% hours with the President during the preceding 17 workdays. He meets for two or more hours a day with Carter, joining him for lunch every Monday, attending his weekly breakfasts with foreign policy advisers, and has an open invitation from Carter to attend every meeting with visiting world leaders. Declared the President: "There is no one who would approach him in his importance to me, his closeness to me and his ability to carry out a singular assignment with my complete trust."

Mondale took all the suggestions about his fading away with typical good humor. Jutting his jaw up and to the side, he gibed, "Is this my high profile or my low profile?" His aides argued that Mondale's less prominent role was in fact intended to make him more valuable to Carter. Said one of Mondale's associates: "For a Vice President, there's an almost inverse ratio between effectiveness and visibility." From the outset of the Carter Administration, Mondale --one of the two insiders in the White House (the other: James Schlesinger) with broad national and Washington experience--has been a trusted adviser. Explained he: "That takes a tremendous amount of time listening, learning, working, talking in-house--and the nature of my advice has to remain confidential."

As a result, it is difficult to document precisely what Mondale has advised or evaluate how wise his counsel has been.

He is not foolhardy enough to rush to reporters and boast of how he turned the President around on any specific issue.

Joked Mondale: "I'm not keeping score."

Added a prominent Democratic official:

"Mondale knows the nature of Jimmy Carter--and that Jimmy could cut him off at the knees." At the press conference, Carter said the Vice President has been especially influential in helping him shape his policies on energy, tax reform, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Middle East. Mondale at first spoke out in support of Lance, but he later concluded that Lance should go.

Mondale this week will turn visible again. He plans to make a four-day political swing through California, Kansas and Illinois. His schedule calls for at least half a dozen additional trips this fall and a steady stream of Democratic fund raisers in Washington. Ironically, as the Lance affair helped feed rumors of Mondale's falling star, the departure of Georgia's Lance makes Carter more reliant than ever on the man from Minnesota. -

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