Late Word comes to Us, of the death of Former US Vice President and the 1984 democratic nominee, Walter "Fritz" Mondale. Fate in someways dealt well but also perversely to the Former Senator from Minnesota, but for a few hundred thousand votes in three states he might've ended up as Hubert Humphrey's Attorney General in 1968. As it was, his bona fides as a legit US Senate "Work House" and a liberal stalwart (he was once Fair Housing's Idea of Heinz Guderian) got him the Vice Presidential Nomination with Jimmy Carter in 1976. It was Mondale's sad fate that in a subsequent administration given over to idealists, outsiders, a few scarred veterans of the Johnson Admin, he the VP was literally the only politician in the room.
Despite a groundbreaking alteration in the status of the VP, where Mondale became an all purpose policy advisor, lightning rod and administrator for the Admin, and finally the office became a pure creature of the Executive Department in the process, I think Carter even today, wishes he'd just listened to Fritz a bit more. He might've avoided that whole malaise speech thing...Mondale opposed that whole notion, he knew too well that good politicians only announce success, they can never prosper by explaining failure. Carter's idealism was soon supplanted by Reagan's blatant sky-grifting, and thus we come to campaign '84, wherein Mondale provided two signature services to the electorate, neither was appreciated at the time, but both are of note to historians, y'know the only obit-writers worth reading.
1.) It fell to candidate Mondale to bluntly call the political class' bluff on the subject of the burgeoning budget deficit. Faced with shortfalls that had quadrupled in four short years, Mondale sighed, rolled up 
his sleeves and openly proposed new taxes and budget caps to balance the budget. The punditariat on down, screamed like stuck pigs at this allegedly crass error in tactics, promising to raise taxes in an election years is "bad politics" etc. However its my own view that Mondale's blunt assessment of the deficit called everyone's bluff, Reagan was always lying about balancing the budget, hiding behind a proposed constitutional amendment that would never be passed by congress to say nothing of being approved by the state, he knew it and yet on he went fantasizing and prevaricating. Mondale also demonstrated that the entire political class inside and outside congress was completely intellectually corrupt on the notion of the deficit, at best as a matter of economics its a worry every four years that never seems to get resolved, thus making it a remarkably intangible threat to our survival. A liberal democrat running as a deficit hawk was a bold Quixotic Choice in 1984, but really those were the only desperate options open to Mondale. He exposed something that dogs us to this day, for that he earns the gratitude of history, it's not for nothing that no one has ever revisited the issue in a serious way on the campaign trail since 1984.
2.) It fell to Mondale, to demonstrate in public the imperiled nature of Ronald Reagan's wits in that first presidential debate back in 1984. The President, clearly had an attack of aphasia on live television maundering and wandering off his usually strictly prepared script. It was an early harbinger of things to come with Donald Trump with his four year long narcissistic fugue state. The fact that the whole country got a good long look at Reagan's faltering mentality and still voted for him, isn't an indictment of Mondale's appeal, it is however a sad testament to the USA's ability to face facts when we think times are good. But in the end it worked out for the Best, I've always maintained Nancy Reagan was one of the best US President's we've ever had, at least insofar as Arms Control is Concerned.
But the ensuing electoral debacle, even that Mondale survived...he retired, wrote some books, collected his pension, Clinton made him Ambassador to Japan...slowly the chat show called him in on occasional, it may have been a source of grim ironic solace to Mondale at the end that he was right about almost everything he discussed in 1984...even the efficacy of nominating a woman for VP, Kamala Harris owes much to the trailblazing of Geraldine Ferraro.
And if, in the end, we are not, living in Mondale's rational, utilitarian, liberal consensus driven world, then maybe, having seen the ghastly alternatives we ought to give that world a second chance.
R.I.P. Fritz, you are one vote I never regretted.
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