Obituary: Walter Mondale

 I just got this on my Twitter feed:

Former Vice President Walter Mondale dies at 93 - Axios https://t.co/PFwd6kci0h

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 20, 2021

I was just thinking about him the other day as I was researching who were the longest-lived vice presidents.  John Nance Garner was the oldest, at 98.  Walter Mondale was close, and I believe he was the VP whose retirement after being VP was the longest on record, just as President Carter continues to be to this date.  He is now 96 years old and the longest-lived president on record.

Mondale served for many years as senator from Minnesota.  Following his term as VP (1977-1981), he ran for president as the Democratic Party nominee, but he was up against Reagan, who was running for re-election.  He lost 49 states in that run.  

His wife Joan and daughter Eleanor predecease him.

link

Snip:

 

As vice president from 1977 to 1981, Mondale transformed the office from what had historically been a punchline into what both he and Carter called a true governing partnership. Mondale's role as chief adviser and troubleshooter, working from a West Wing office near the Oval Office, became a model for successors including George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden. 

 "The first person I called was Fritz," Biden once said about the time President Barack Obama offered him the No. 2 position. "Just as George Washington set the contours for the presidency, Mondale more than anyone else made the vice presidency into a robust and constructive institution," said vice presidential scholar Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University. Mondale's high profile in the Carter administration as it grappled with inflation, an energy crisis and the 444-day Iranian hostage standoff set him on a path to his party's presidential nomination in 1984. But his overwhelming defeat did not end his public career. 

 In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. ambassador to Japan, a post he held for three years. And in 2002, tragedy pulled Mondale back into Minnesota politics.

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You don't see too many people in politics with his integrity anymore.