Mondale: "I Am Ready Now"

By Robert Ajemian

He strives to prove he is tough enough to be President

Looking to the presidential campaign, this article begins a series to appear periodically during 1983 probing the character and personality of each of the major candidates.

Perhaps it is Walter Mondale's fate that much of his recent life has been devoted to wiping out a public confession made nine years ago. As political farewells go, his was extraordinary. A man who set out to become President decided to toss it all and tell the world openly, astonishingly, that he lacked the determination to seek the biggest job Americans have to offer. "I do not have the overwhelming desire to be President," said Mondale.

The statement was so incredibly honest, so human, that it might have installed Mondale in some kind of political Hall of Fame. Who else had ever pulled the trigger on himself so winningly? The statement set off other reactions too. People who scorned that kind of political immolation thought Mondale had shown an impotence that could never be forgiven. Eugene McCarthy, Mondale's former colleague and a man who has also been accused of being a quitter, later expressed his own savage view: Mondale had the soul of a Vice President.

But most were ready to take Mondale at his word. He won instant credibility as a politician who had made peace with himself, except that it turned out not to be peace at all. Only two years later Mondale launched a campaign to convince himself and all Americans that he did not mean what he had said. He eagerly set out to become Jimmy Carter's Vice President, and made it. Now, in the early spring of 1983, he somehow had revived his presidential reputation. Here he was, leading all the Democratic candidates by a wide margin, and running ahead of Ronald Reagan too. He held the institutional center of the Democratic Party in his grasp. Now he stood in front of audiences volunteering that back in 1974 he had simply not been ready. "What I'm telling you," he says, "is that I am ready to be President now."

But even as he kept gathering support--and this is where the story of Walter Mondale takes on more haunting proportions--the old self-doubt kept creeping in. Telltale signs of the well-known Mondale shilly-shallying began showing up. He fumbled his relationship with his former boss, Jimmy Carter. And he warily navigated his way through the party's numerous interest blocs, careful to offend no one. Like his own captive party, he seemed more bound up in special interests than in national interests. Maybe, political observers said to themselves, he was right about himself the first time.

In Walter Mondale's laborious reconstruction of himself, the most important event was Carter's selection of him as Vice President. From that position he could speak with authority in all kinds of forums, and he did. By 1980, when he and Carter had lost, Mondale had pretty much decided to run, although he felt the need to test himself further. "The public can spot hesitation," he says, "and so can the people close to you." After a year of touring the country, the hesitation was still there. By the spring of 1982, it was apparent that Mondale had lost some of the drive he had generated in the vice presidency and his staff members had picked up on it. They became disheartened and even angry that Mondale was not bearing down hard enough. One of them was ready to urge Mondale once again to quit. "I'm not going through this whole thing again," the aide told colleagues.

Somehow, spurred perhaps by the specter of himself as a loser, Mondale last summer finally got going again. He toughened up his speeches, put in longer days. When his staff handed him fund-raising lists, he sat down and made the grueling calls himself. He even agreed to a speech coach to help him appear more incandescent. He searched for an issue that matched his new forceful style and found one: a blunt call for the U.S. to get a lot tougher about Japanese trade. The high rhetoric had all the sounds of an illiberal protectionism, but Mondale plowed ahead anyway. In front of roaring union audiences, he protested with telling exaggeration that American businessmen almost had to resort to U.S. Army tanks to get products into Japan. Mondale was thrilled with his own new boldness. "Did you see the stories?" he proudly asked friends, sometimes mailing them clippings to make certain they read about his aggressive style.

By election night last November, Mondale was rolling. As hundreds of Democrats gathered in his law offices to celebrate the winning congressional returns, Mondale holed up in a back room. He sat at a big desk, behind a telephone console with 15 lighted lines, placing calls to hundreds of politicians and state leaders across the country, and for five hours he never stopped, congratulating winners, consoling losers, selling himself. His wife and a few top staffers stood watching in one corner of the room, elated. "He's a different person," whispered one of his aides. "It's marvelous."

A few weeks later Mondale got his biggest boost: Ted Kennedy telephoned to say that he was abandoning the race. Mondale's confidence soared. He began to confront political operators directly, warning them that there was no more room to stall, challenging them in a way he had never done before. When some held out, the suddenly combative Mondale took it personally and told them so.

On the road, Mondale stuck to his forceful tone. Standing in front of a group of Democratic activists last February in Nashua, N.H., he attacked Reagan as an uncaring leader. His voice strong, his hand chopping the air, he told of homeless people roaming the country for work, as many as 3,800 people in one city lining up for 80 jobs. "It's like something out of The Grapes of Wrath," he said. As he moved from town to town, his mastery of Government was palpable. He spoke of world leaders he had met, of knowing where the country's best brains are located. He pointed out his long record of fighting for the disadvantaged and the poor. To ensure that no one would think him an old-fashioned liberal spender, he always assailed the huge budget deficits. "We can't go back to a lot of new spending programs," he said. "We all know that."

At 55, Mondale certainly has presidential looks. He is an attractive, boyish-looking man, with a beaked nose, a nasal-baritone voice, and graying, sandy hair. He has an easy, likable manner and a quick wit he often turns on himself. His self-deprecation springs from his country roots in Minnesota. His father was a Methodist minister of Norwegian background who spoke with both a strong accent and a stutter. To augment his $1,800-a-year church salary, he sold corn and cabbages out of his garden. His mother Claribel helped out by giving piano lessons. Fritz, as he was called, had his own chores, like gathering corncobs to burn in the kitchen stove instead of coal. He was an enthusiastic singer who competed in school contests; at Sunday church services the Mondales led the congregation in hymns. In 1938, when Fritz was ten, his father wanted the family to see the nation's capital. He nailed wooden boards around the sides of a flatbed truck, loaded in canned goods and mattresses, and drove his wife and three sons to Washington. There he visited one of Minnesota's Senators, who invited the family to a meal in the Senate dining room; young Fritz tagged along in his bare feet.

Mondale returned to the Senate in style--and shoes--in 1965, after he had been appointed to a vacant seat (later he was twice elected). Though a steadfast liberal, he rarely took unpopular stands or did anything in revolt. That caution showed up more clearly when Mondale became Vice President. He was regarded as politically smart, but he also became known for his nervousness. Carter and his Cabinet members got used to Mondale's early dire warnings of the political consequences of decisions. The Israelis and the Jewish lobby especially unsettled him. When Carter decided against providing the Turks with some promised military equipment, thus pleasing their Greek adversaries, Mondale was exultant about not losing the Greek lobby. "Fritz was shamelessly political," recalls one Carter Cabinet officer. The President had only one serious criticism of Mondale. "Fritz doesn't step up to the tough ones," he often told intimates.

This spring, as the pressures started to build on Front Runner Mondale, the old signs of vacillation returned. Trade Commissioner William Brock first put the heat on by declaring that Mondale was playing a dangerous game in his sharp attacks on the Japanese. Congressman Norman Mineta, a California Democrat, complained privately to Mondale that he thought the attacks were racist.

Mondale, with fateful predictability, started to back off. "I'm not a protectionist," he said defensively. He had repeated his assault on the Japanese before three large union conventions last fall. By February, when he addressed the United Auto Workers, the union most eager to hear that kind of emotional talk, Mondale had abandoned all the harsh language.

But Mondale's support for Israel is unshakable. His mentor, Hubert Humphrey, always counseled that there were three groups he must never antagonize: Big Labor, blacks and Jews. Mondale has followed that advice with extraordinary stubbornness. "The Jewish connection is absolutely essential to this campaign," says one of Mondale's top strategists. "We watch it very carefully." Mondale is nourished by their financial support. Says one of his fund raisers: "When I start my pitch about Mondale, most of them say to me, 'I know, I know, just tell me how much you want.' "

Mondale's ambivalence is especially demonstrable in his uneasy relationship with Jimmy Carter. He made the judgment early that he must keep his distance from the unpopular and defeated Carter. In a newspaper interview last month, Mondale made clear that he had differed with Carter on such controversial decisions as building the MX, selling arms to the Saudis and imposing the grain embargo on the Soviets. His candor caused Mondale to be accused of disloyalty. A few days later, at a Georgia rally where six candidates appeared--to Mondale's relief, Carter was traveling in the Middle East--Mondale was the only speaker who failed to mention Carter's name. The criticism increased, and he called one close friend and hesitantly inquired whether he should travel to Plains and interview the President about his trip. The friend was appalled at the idea. Seasoned analysts would see through it, the friend warned, and it would not serve Mondale's effort to be independent. Mondale dropped the subject.

Mondale apparently still has trouble hanging tough with decisions once he makes them. Last month he volunteered to campaign for black Candidate Harold Washington in Chicago's hostile mayoralty battle. He was asked to accompany Washington on a visit to a white neighborhood and quickly decided it was a bad idea. When Washington brusquely pressured him, Mondale changed his mind. But the street filled with jeering whites, and suddenly it was necessary for the two men to skip out to avoid an ugly scene.

Sitting relaxed on a sofa in his white-walled living room in Washington, Mondale talked about the pressures of being out front. He looked youthful in a green turtleneck shirt, faded jeans and blue running shoes. His wife Joan was in the kitchen making lunch. A couple of cats, Kitty and Squirt, crawled on and off his lap. He was asked about the recurring theme that he lacked the 33 strength of leadership to stand up to pressure groups.

Mondale sounded annoyed at that. "I didn't spend 20 years of my life trying to get elected," he said, leaning forward, "and then surrender it all to someone else." He saw his approach as unifying rather than pacifying, an effort to make allies, not enemies. "These groups like labor, the blacks, the Israelis," he said, "must trust the President. You need that trust to draw people together."

Mondale, still searching for his own mandate, remembered sadly that Jimmy Carter never really had one. "His campaign strategy," said Mondale, "was to remain unclear on all the issues. When he got elected, there was no agenda to lean on. Honesty was not enough." Mondale's face tightened a bit. "Let me tell you," he said, "being in the White House without a mandate is pure hell."

He says the reason he was so very sensitive to political consequences was that Carter was not. The President, he said, was a reclusive man who went out of his way to avoid personal politics. Mondale remembered one instance in which he urged Carter to veto some bill, any bill, just to show a little political muscle. "I said, 'Mr. President, they're laughing at you up on the Hill. Show them.' And he did," said Mondale.

Questions about whether he can take heat, Mondale says, are unfair. "To get the filibuster level lowered from two-thirds to 60%," he says, "I spent four straight months on the floor of the Senate. The leadership fought me hard on it, but I won. I spent hundreds of hours changing the intelligence bill, restructuring the FBI. I walked right into that thicket. The idea that I don't stick with things is just wrong."

Mondale lighted a long, thick cigar and sat back on the sofa. Though he is a shrewd political analyst, he is not reflective about himself. One wondered as he talked how much he saw of his own weaknesses. "I'm my own agent now," he said, "not someone else's advocate. I've tested myself. I went out for two years like a national vagrant, learning, changing, to see if I had what's necessary to lead."

Now Mondale is the man in charge. The self-doubt he felt in the distant past, he insists, is over. "The most difficult and mysterious thing about this," he says, staring intently at his guest, "is to persuade yourself you can be President." With special emphasis, he closed, "I've done that." Still, he must demonstrate that he can do more than make the right tactical moves. Everyone knows he is capable of that. Walter Mondale must show that he can step up to the tough ones all by himself.

--By Robert Ajemian This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.