Something old and something new

National Review, July 27, 1984 by Richard Brookhiser

THE ONLY POLITICAL analyst I know of who predicted that Walter Mondale's fortunes would reach the low estate they reached on March 10 in Plains, Georgia, was Helen Miller, who was NATIONAL REVIEW'S switchboard operator. She bet me $5, back in January, that the winner of the Democratic Nomination would be Gary Hart; what's more, she picked Hart to win the New Hampshire primary. "When times are bad," she explained her defiance of all the experts, "people want a little change in their lives."

The experts were wrong, she was right. In hindsight, the spitball question, the one that slipped through the blind spot in Mondale's zone, was posed by Hart in the Des Moines debate on February 11. On what, if anything, he asked the front-runner, have you ever disagreed with organized labor? "I'm a candidate they can trust, not one they can run," was all Mondale could reply. A few days later, seemingly after arduous thought, he came up with a pair of programs--the Clinch river breeder, simpson-Mazzoli--that labor supported and he opposed. Too later. His slowness didn't hurt him in Iowa, a caucus state where a strong union apparat marched out the troops. But in New Hampshire, thin on unions and full of cussedness, the image of Mondale as goods bought and paid for looked less attractive; and although times haven't been particularly bad in the Granite State, the voters there always like a little change in their lives.

For two weeks after the New Hampshire primary, nothing went right for Walter Mondale. He lost the Maine caucuses on a Sunday, and the Vermont beauty contest on a Tuesday. The Wyoming caucuses went heavily against him that Saturday. Sober folk gave Hart a chance of sweeping Super Tuesday.

Mondale was down to his last assets: the black mayor of Birmingham; the unions of the Alabama industrial belt; and the 39th President of the United States.

A speakers' platform a high-school band were parked across Plains's main street. The peach blossoms were bursting, birds sang like hinges. Each sunny surface was in spring, but in the shadows winter lingered. Mondale and his sometime boss came to the rally on foot. Down-home gear was part of the Carter style. Mondale prefers suits and tightly cinched ties, but for the occasion he had donned blue jeans and a black cardigan.

The Carter Administration, by the end of its tenure, was held in about the same esteem as buchanan's. What benefit could Mondale wring from that disastrous association? The lieutenant governor of Georgia, introducing Mondale's introducer, gave a clue: History, he said, would record that Carter made a great President, but "more than anything else, to those of us who were born and lived in the South, he gave a sense of pride." Appomattox, after all these years. And Mondale was rallying the Confederates.

Jimmy Carter, for his part, praised him generously. Mondale, in the period of his pre-New Hampshire omnipotence, had handled the Carter record with some delicacy, stressing his experience as an active Vice President high in the nation's counsels, yet ducking attempts to pin unpopular decisions on him by asserting that he had always counseled against them. Now was no time for finicking. "When I searched for peace," Carter said earnestly, "Fritz Mondale was tha. When I sat across the table from Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin and plotted our strategy on SALT II, Fritz Mondale was tha. . . ." The list was long, and included increases in defense spending and plans to reduce the deficit.

"I can tell you from experience the White House is not a place to go to school. I don't know the theory of politics. I've been involved in it. [The Carter Presidency in a nutshell.] We're looking at the futah of our country."

The crowd of two or three hundred applauded, still proud of the local boy. (Two older ladies beside me had earlier discussed his term and his character. ". . . they said, we got to get that evil man out 'fth' White House. Well. Jim Carter was a Christian." "Yes." "Jim Carter was a good man.") Mondale spoke last.

"We need a President who understands justice in america, who understands when people are hurting, when people are old, when people are unemployed, when people are sick, when people are handicapped . . ." A pause; had he run out of unfortunates? ". . . Who understands when people need a President who understands and cares for them.

"I'm a people's Democrat. Nothing fancy. No new hair spray." He spoke warningly of Washington, where there were "the finest-dressed lobbyists you've ever seen in your life," wearing "the sweetest perfume you ever smelled. You need a President who remembers who sent him there."

He touched on the Reagan tax cuts, which he criticized for returning more money to those who paid more: "enough to give the rich a new Lincoln a year; enough to give the average American scarcely a hubcap." His father, he finished, had been a minister, his mother a music teacher. "They were good Americans, good friends. They're being forgotten. Give me the chance to carry that struggle for what you believe to the nomination and to the White House."