But always, in the back of their minds, the vice president is considering how the president’s policies will affect him and his own chances of one day being elected president. Vice presidents and their advisers insist their primary job is to advance the president’s agenda, and not their own. In the modern era, Dick Cheney is the only vice president who had no presidential ambitions because he had abandoned them years earlier. President Joe Biden speaks from the Treaty Room in the White House on Wednesday, April 14, 2021, about the withdrawal of the remainder of U.S. Neustadt, sent him reminders about the potential land mines surrounding the vice presidency: “The White House staff lives in the present,” he wrote, “the VP’s staff in the future.” The media took to calling Carter, the former governor of Georgia, and his liberal Minnesota running mate “Fritz and Grits.” (Fritz was Mondale’s nickname.)ĭuring the 1992 presidential campaign Al Gore’s former Harvard professor, the political scientist Richard E. Vice presidents need to have complete access, Carter argued, pointing to the danger of Harry Truman being kept in the dark by FDR about the atomic bomb. Said Carter: “We both had seen how poorly some vice presidents had been treated and underutilized in the past and both felt it was a waste of talent.” Carter described their years together in the White House as a “family environment.” “I think the genius of this and the reason for its success was Carter’s commitment,” Mondale told me. The effectiveness of any vice president depends on his relationship with the president. “I could trust him to give me candid advice on a variety of subjects, but once a policy decision was made I could also trust that he would represent my decision accurately and with enthusiasm,” Carter told me when I interviewed him for “First in Line.” “I think the key thing is for a vice president to feel that his advice is heeded and that he has unfettered access to give it.”Ĭhristine Limerick, who worked in the White House from 1979 to 2008 as the head housekeeper, said the vice president she saw most often in the private second-floor residence at the White House was Mondale, whom she also saw in the residence with his wife, Joan, several times having dinner with the Carters. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesĬarter mourns Mondale's death: 'The best vice president in our country's history'Ĭarter obliged. Carter's wife, Rosalynn, and their daughter Amy, wave beside them. The biggest single problem of our recent administrations has been the failure of the president to be exposed to independent analysis not conditioned by what it is thought he wants to hear or often what others want him to hear.”ġ5th July 1976: Democratic Presidential nominee Jimmy Carter raises hands with Vice Presidential nominee Walter Mondale (right) at the Democratic National Convention, New York City. Mondale, who had served in the Senate, told Carter, “I believe the most important contribution I can make is to serve as a general adviser to you. Carter signed off on it with no amendments and no deletions. Before he agreed to Carter’s offer to be his running mate in 1976, Mondale penned that document formalizing his approach to their relationship. That is because Mondale made the vice presidency – an oft-maligned position – into an actual job. ![]() Each of them, from Al Gore to Dick Cheney, rhapsodized about the partnership between Carter and Mondale. Though Mondale never got his wish to be president, Biden knew that he had revolutionized the vice presidency and represented the gold standard for every future vice president.įor my 2018 book about the vice presidency I interviewed every former vice president. Central to Mondale’s success: Taking on the role of general adviser and not requesting specific assignments. (It should be noted that the office is just 17 steps from the Oval, next to the chief of staff’s.) And he insisted on a weekly lunch with the president, a tradition that is still in place. He also wanted a West Wing office, which he got. The deal included Mondale’s three major requirements: unimpeded access to the president the same access to classified material as the president and unrestricted institutional responsibilities. Biden had wanted to get a good look at it first. ![]() Biden and Obama met after Mondale sent Biden the formal agreement made with Carter. ![]() Walter Mondale, who died Monday at age 93, was both an adviser and a loyal lieutenant to Jimmy Carter during his presidency and a role model to every vice president who followed him.
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