Friday, April 13, 2007
Walter Mondale did more than just serve as vice president of the United States for Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.
“He essentially created the modern vice presidency,” said Bill Lacy, director of the Dole Institute of Politics.
Walter Mondale, former vice president under President Jimmy Carter, gives a speech Thursday evening at the Dole Institute of Politics. The tickets for the event were all sold out.
Mondale spoke Thursday night to a sold-out crowd in the Dole lecture hall, a building he was more than obliged to visit.
“I am delighted and stunned by the beauty of this Dole center,” Mondale said.
The former vice president discussed not only his role in revamping the second-in-command position, but he also shared his views on current politics, as well as his respect for Sen. Robert Dole.
He said Dole had been a war hero in America’s greatest generation and he had the ability to work with both parties during his years in office.
“He’s got a second engine that most of us don’t have,” Mondale said.
His father, Theodore Mondale, was a liberal preacher who always talked about a “social gospel,” which asked Christians to give personal worship to God as well as give service to their fellow human beings.
Mondale said that inspired him to get involved in public office at an early age.
“It just came naturally,” he said. “I think I was on the trail at 16 years old.”
He said when he and Carter were elected vice president and president in 1976, the vice presidency was viewed at that time as an “iffy office.”
The vice president worked in both the executive and legislative branches of government, though the vice president was wanted in neither, he said.
He told Carter he thought he could serve the president better as a senator than as a vice president. But Carter insisted on the position and said that for the first time Mondale would be playing an integral role in the administration.
“We executised the vice presidency,” Mondale said.
He said that the expanded role of vice president has been taken too far in the current executive administration, and said that the vice president has now tried to influence various agencies about what to tell the president.
“Carter wouldn’t like that,” he said.
Mondale said there used to be more mutual respect between rivals in the Senate, as well as in presidential debates, compared with a more argumentative state of politics today. He stressed the need to return to those days when honest differences were accepted among political rivals.
“It was about having an argument while accepting the good will of the opponent,” he said. “This dividing America, trying to destroy each other, does not work.”
He also called the Iraq-war issue the “elephant in the room” for the 2008 presidential candidates to take stands on.
Mondale said growing tensions with Iran also needed to be handled diplomatically, rather than through initial force.
“Let’s continue to put pressure on Iran to stop nuclear weapons, but let’s also try to get some diplomatic talks with them,” he said.
The Dole center had help bringing the vice president from his great niece, Lauren Leonard, Plymouth, Minn., sophomore, who was recognized before the lecture.
Kansan staff writer Tyler Harbert can be contacted at tharbert@kansan.com.
— Edited by Will McCullough
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Vice president to Carter preaches mutual respect
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