Transcript of M.E. Sprengelmeyer's interview with Walter Mondale

The Rocky

Published August 15, 2008 at midnight

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SAN FRANCISCO 1984

* Nominee: Walter Mondale

* What happened: Facing daunting odds against incumbent Ronald Reagan, Mondale throws a series of “Hail Mary” passes, including picking the first-ever female running mate.

* Lessons: Flat-out promising to raise people’s taxes probably is not a strategy that will be used again.

ADVICE

“Yeah, I probably was more ‘root-canal’ than was needed.”

Walter Mondale, 80, in Minneapolis

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Interview with Walter Mondale by M.E. Sprengelmeyer of the Rocky Mountain News, May 14, 2008, at a law office conference room in Minneapolis.

Q: So what we’re doing is we’re talking to the most important figures of past conventions. And you’ve been involved in several conventions, and so we might ask you about some of the other conventions. We’re looking for lessons from what happened at the convention or related to the convention that would somehow apply to this year. Some of the things I wanted to ask you about were: You did some non-traditional things. You nominated a woman. I also wanted to ask you about your acceptance speech, which was more candid than the standard acceptance speech. And any other lessons that could somehow apply to 2008.

MONDALE: The main thing, and then we can get on to specific things, is me speaking as a Democrat and as an American, is we must hope that this convention is basically unified, where the party comes to an agreement that everyone accepts and the convention appears to the American people – there will be millions who will be watching throughout the country and throughout the world — amazing audience . . .

It’s a high moment for the Democratic national nominee and vice-presidential nominee and the party, to make an image that’s positive in the campaign. And because it’s in Denver in the West, demonstrate to Westerners that we’re a Western party, too. Because, in my time the Republicans have done a real number on that possibility. So I think this is a time when we can do a lot of things to strengthen the stature of the Democratic leadership in the minds of the American people. If we can get that done, other things follow.

It is going to be a convention, inherently it is a bold one. We’re either going to nominate the first black presidential nominee in American history, or the first woman presidential nominee in American history. One or the other. And it has never happened before, and it’s going to cause debate about where that person wants to take us. And Americans who have trouble with these issues are going to have to ask themselves again whether they want to . . . those who do think that way.

I’m old enough to remember when I used to hear walking down the main streets here: “You know, I’m a Democrat, but we can’t have a Catholic president. You know what will happen if you have a Catholic president. So you just can’t do it.” We had to fight. We had a ground war in Minnesota. And Kennedy won by 2 percent. We didn’t know until the next morning whether he carried Minnesota. And Minnesota put Kennedy over for president. That’s how close it was. Now nobody even thinks about it anymore. Those fears were just absolutely, totally misplaced. And we will find out the same thing. And we will open up our country to new possibilities of leadership and respect around the world. And we could use some of that.

Q: Ninteen-eighty-four in a sense . . . Do you think it served to do that for women candidates, with Geraldine Ferraro?

MONDALE: I think so, and I think even though we took a drubbing, I think a lot of young women in America got the idea maybe the glass ceiling had disappeared in their minds and they, too, could become prominent public leaders. And while we haven’t seen it at the national level until this election, at the local level, state level, in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, the numbers of women leaders, Speaker of the House included, has been creeping up steadily since those days.

Q: Tell me what went into that decision. When was the first time you had the idea that not only Geraldine Ferraro, but a woman would get serious consideration? What was going through your mind when you made that decision?

MONDALE: I had a lot of time to think about it. I was on the trail there for almost two years, and you do a lot of thinking about how you want to be seen, where you want to take the country that was important. You start also calculating the nature of the opposition and the difficulties you have. And I looked at several really good candidates. But I decided I wanted to include among them women this time. Dianne Feinstein, a terrific public leader. Gerry Ferraro and some others. The governor of Kentucky, and so on. My idea wasn’t that I’m going to appoint, pick a woman. The idea was I wanted to pick somebody who was real good, but who by her presence or his presence could talk about new ideas and change and breaking up the old mold. I had I think a tactical and strategic reason for doing so. Number one, the women’s movement had grown to maturity. It was now a significant force in America, and I felt that it was a real national need to try to open that door. And secondly, I knew that I was in for it with Reagan. Reagan was very popular. We weren’t at war. The economy was in good shape. He was everybody’s favorite grandfather, and I was not going to win this election if I just ran another old Democratic Party campaign. So I knew I had to deal at a higher level.

Q: I was wondering about that, because some of the non-traditional things that you did do made me wonder if you saw the writing on the wall: “This is going to take some Hail Mary passes.”

MONDALE: The writing was not on the wall, it was all over the wall and on the floor. No, no, no. It was clear, anybody who lived around 1984 that this was going to be a tough one.

Q: It seems like we had come pretty far pretty quickly. I’m reading a book on Barbara Jordan . . .

MONDALE: Wonderful human being.

Q: In one of the books about her, she’s quoted about being included on the short list (for vice president) in 1976 at the last second after that terrific speech she had made, and her kind of dismissing it: (like) of course I’m not a serious contender basically, because America’s not ready for somebody like me.

MONDALE: I think there was a lot of feeling like that. We had just come out of separate but equal in America. She grew up in a time when the odds of her doing any of the things she did in later life were just out of the question. I remember, after we were elected, we interviewed her and urged her to be a candidate for attorney general. We didn’t offer but we were getting close. Would she be willing, and she said no. So I think, I don’t know what her reasons were, but I think that was a sign of the times.

Q: So here we are in 1984, you’re facing an uphill fight. You need to do something very bold, and it sounds like you’re saying, something that on the face of your candidate, your running mate says, “Change.” What kind of push-back or advice on the other side were you getting from the folks around you? Were they all on board with it? Did you have skeptics who said it would be a good idea, a bad idea? Were there other candidates?

MONDALE: Among the groups I talked to, there was no push-back on the idea of including women on the list of people you’re seriously considering, and no opposition in principle. It all came down to different candidates, with different strengths, different vulnerabilities, who could do the best? The biggest question was, who could be a good vice president? And I think I had pretty strong, across-the-board support for the decision I made. She was easily confirmed by the convention, gave a very good speech, and got off to a good start. We were one point ahead of Mr. Reagan when we left San Francisco . . .

Q: When you left that convention, did you leave the convention saying, “That’s it. We’re on our way!” Because these conventions are all designed to do that.

MONDALE: We had a real good convention: one of the best conventions I think the Democratic Party ever had. When we started that convention, we were down about 20 points in the polls, and every day our public support jumped 4 or 5 points until, when we were left, people were really amazed at that range of speakers and what they had to say and the new directions that were being . . . A lot of people were being exhilarated by the idea that we were finally going to break that glass ceiling against women. That’s one place where America has been behind. So we came out of there I think with a lot of zip, but I never kidded myself. You always get a bounce at a convention. Would it be sustained? I was going to try to sustain it. She was, too.

Q: What did you see particularly in Geraldine Ferraro?

MONDALE: Lots of things. She was a very good member of Congress. She was already in the leadership. She had a knack for working with her colleagues. She was very well-liked. She was tough and would make decisions, had a good political sense to her. I had worked with her on many things. I felt I could work comfortably with her. I thought she would be a good candidate. She got very competitive and would be a good candidate. And she brought me not only those qualities of leadership, but she was also a new idea in America. Instead of just looking at 50 percent of America’s talent, look at 100 percent. And put that gender issue behind us. That was the big thing in my mind. I had been in the civil rights movement all my life, and I could see how if we hadn’t done that, America would have been tragically crippled. We talked about the Kennedy progress with the Catholic faith and I saw this as another door that America would open.

Q: Was there ever a moment in the campaign or even after the November result where you regretted that decision at all?

MONDALE: No. Let me put it this way, I am very grateful for Gerry. She was an excellent candidate. She put into it everything she could. I have no regrets about picking her. We hit some bumps in the road, but I don’t blame her for them. One of the things that slowed us down was the temporary refusal to disclose personal tax returns, which she did. And once we looked at the tax returns, they were just fine. But her husband — and that’s one of the problems today, the way gender politics worked out, suddenly the husband becomes (the issue). He’s a nice guy, too, but he’s a businessman, he didn’t want to disclose his returns. Well, he did disclose it. We had a long news conference in which Gerry answered all the questions. So I don’t begrudge that at all. It was painful to us. We lost some ground. But I don’t blame her for that.

Q: Before I move on — I want to talk about the speech. But what did you think when Congresswoman Ferraro got involved in the controversy during this campaign with the statements she had made about Barack Obama.

MONDALE: Listen, let’s talk about conventions. I’m not talking about . . . right now.

Q: An editor threw that question in my head.

MONDALE: I figured he would.

Q: The speech that you made was non-traditional.

MONDALE: Yeah.

Q: The speech, it wasn’t all sunshine.

MONDALE: Nope.

Q: And you made no apologies for that. This is the original straight-talk speech. And I remember one of the phrases from it actually was used quite prominently by Hillary Clinton on the trail, talking about the “trap door” the middle class faces. Can you talk about what was your thinking going into the formulation of that speech?

MONDALE: I had a fairly pessimistic idea where America was unless we got our act together. We had this kind of happy-talk government. We were running further and further in debt. We could see deficits of 300 or 400 billion dollars a year. I have been in that Senate. I knew that was not going to last long. And the longer it lasted, the things I believe in most would pay the highest price: education, health care, the environment. They’d be the first to go. So I wanted to do something to restore a responsible budget that allowed us also to make progress, opportunity. And so I thought I had to take hold of this issues of taxes. You know, the terrible word in American life. Everyone tries to walk around it. Or, post-election appraisals: “Oh, I didn’t know we were this far in debt, so maybe we’ll . . .” So I decided to hit it straight on. And what I said was right then and proved right historically. They were planning a tax cut — a tax increase — but they wouldn’t tell us. And after the election they had not one but several tax increases because the budget was unsustainable. So, you know, I probably get a gold medal somewhere, probably a bronze medal, for telling the truth. But I think it scared politicians so much, you never hear that again. I don’t think you’ll hear that pitch made at either convention this year.

Q: I was telling Judy that the key phrase that everyone remembers is “I just did.”

MONDALE: I said, “We’re both going to raise taxes. He won’t tell you. I just did.” Yeah, and I was telling the truth. I’m not sure it made much difference.

Q: It was used quite a bit. What is the lesson of both those then? If now we take both those issues: how you went into formulating that speech and how you went into picking Geraldine Ferraro as your running mate? It would seem . . . Can you look ahead to the 2008 convention and say, “OK, for the nominee, here’s some advice on the type of messaging you should put out” — whether it should be a candid speech, a pessimistic speech, a ‘New Realism’ speech, or a different type of speech?

MONDALE: I think it should be optimistic, but realistic. I think the country is right in the middle of some real dreadful issues. The deficit, in fact, is worse than when I talked about it. The war in Iraq is spending us into bankruptcy. International polls show that we’ve alienated a good chunk of the world, including our friends. We’ve got an environmental crisis that’s growing, that could lead to catastrophic collapse in the lifetime of our grandchildren. It’s compelling, and other than rhetoric nothing’s happening on it. And we’ve got some very severe domestic needs. Health care is moving beyond affordability. We’ve got to get better answers for people and how they travel and how they live, so the middle class is not shrunk and eliminated the way this is happening now. I’m not saying it’s eliminated, but there are tremendous pressures on the middle class.

I think our candidate has to make that case in clear terms. I also think the candidate has to, without being mean about it, define these last eight years, which I think have been dreadful years. We haven’t been told the truth. We haven’t been responsible with our budget. We’ve gotten into wars for, almost every American agrees, the wrong reasons. Our adversaries are winning now against us because we can’t get out of there, they won’t get out of there. And we just simply have to get our act together again. And if we can come across that way, I think Americans are right there.

This is later, I know, but . . . There was just an election in Mississippi for Congress yesterday. We haven’t held that seat since, I don’t know, Abraham Lincoln or something, and the Democrat won. The public just wants this thing changed.

Q: You should have seen the press release that went out from the NRCC on that.

MONDALE: What did it say?

Q: Talk about straight talk, it ended with a paragraph that said every Republican congressional candidate in the country should look at this election result and get your act in order . . .

MONDALE: Very sobering, and there has been about three of them now. We’ve had state legislative elections. There’s something going on. And I think the public wants this change, but they want to be positive about it. They don’t want a wrecking crew.

Q: That would seem to be something we could look at. It seemed like the 1984 race — when, by the way, I was 17 years old and I was kicking myself that I couldn’t register, so I registered anyway. I didn’t vote. I didn’t vote.

MONDALE: What a pity. Thanks for trying.

Q: But it seemed like that one was optimism vs. realism in a way, even if the optimism as you said in your speeches was false. Optimism vs. realism. And in a sense, optimism won.

MONDALE: It did. It did. And that was one of Reagan’s great talents. He exuded this optimism. And he would fix the facts to fit his vision. And I was trying to talk about real things. And many of the . . . That’s not the way he wanted to look at it. And I think the times had a lot to do with it. People didn’t feel under threat. The things I was talking about were one step away, remote. He was comforting and positive, although he was sort of a right-winger, he never really pushed a lot of that stuff very hard so people didn’t feel threatened. And so he was able to catch, you know, “It’s morning in America.” He caught this feeling. I don’t think people believe “It’s morning in America” now. I think that if you look at this, “Is our country on the right track or going the wrong direction?” Almost historically high percentages of Americans say we are on the wrong track, and they want to change that. So I think the mood, the feeling of the time is different.

I was nominated in ’76 for vice president with Jimmy Carter. That election, although it ended up close, you could feel it. It was just a nice, lifting feeling wherever you went. And I thought we were going to win that. But ’80, it just collapsed on us. And ’84, they felt good about Reagan.

Q: It’s interesting that there’s now kind of a competition, who can be the biggest straight talker right now. Even with John McCain, he’s giving a Republican version of the speech on the stump that’s kind of like your ’84 speech in a sense, saying, “I’m going to give you some straight talk here. Things are bad and we’ve got to change them. And you’re not going to like hearing this, but here it is . . .”

MONDALE: One of the things that I’ve found after all these years on the trail — it’s obvious in a sense, but sometimes it gets forgotten. A lot of the questions you get, a lot of the issues that are presented to you, are presented like this issue, that issue, that issue. But if you unwrap the question, you’ll find it’s often a character question. Do you have any guts? Are you telling us the truth? Are you willing to stand up to the people, not just your opponents, but people who are wrong in your own party? Character, courage, strength. They know the presidency is a tremendous challenge, not just in terms of issues, but just internal strength to stand your ground, to deal under pressure, to confront adversaries who could destroy us, to deal with the Congress, at the same time persuading the American people that you’re on the right course, to listen, to learn. It’s almost an impossible job and part of the definition of that job is it’s not just what you say, but who are you. And that is always something that every person at every level, but particularly running for president and vice president, they ought to be very conscious of trying to let people in on their lives, in on how they think, in a way that it comforts them.

Q: If you were writing a speech then for this nominee, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican, what would the general theme or the first line or one of the key lines be? What’s the one message you think, if you were to write a speech like that . . .?

MONDALE: I’d try to make the point that America is a nation of enormous strength, that we ought to see that and build on our strength. And that there’s much of this we should do together, but government is needed. The market unregulated can produce what we’re going through now. It doesn’t self-regulate itself. It can go off the tracks. That we need to, Americans have got to get . . . Let me stop here because I’m rambling.

Optimism, but realistic optimism based on our strengths, but how we must build on those strengths. On America’s unique position in the world, but how we must be the America that the world wants, with that decent respect for the opinion of mankind that we promised as a new nation. That we have certain mega-issues which, if unsolved, could destroy the life maybe of our grandchildren. Runaway nuclear weapons or fissile material in the hands of these non-state operators could destroy Denver while they’re talking. And of course the environmental issues I think are real and profound. So we must work on those things.

And then I would say something about empathy toward the vulnerable in American life. We’ve had about 25 years of the market-only answers for poor kids trying to go to school . . . And talk about failed schools, people say the market. We have to accept that the market is essential, but there are certain things to do, we have got to do together through government or it won’t get done. And especially where people are poor or vulnerable with racial and other kinds of problems, if we’re going to meet our challenges in the future, we need them as a part of a successful America.

Q: In a sense, the speech that you just gave and you think needs to be given today is the speech you gave then. The one word I wrote down here that jumps out, that maybe I didn’t hear as much of in that ’84 speech, was the word optimism. Do you think that, is that a lesson of your speech in hindsight?

MONDALE: Yeah. I probably was more root-canal than was needed. But you need to be, you need to hit those elements of American life that we should feel good about, but at the same time we need to build on. We should feel good about how well education works for so many Americans, but feel that we must do more to make it work for all Americans. We should feel good about the wonderful health care that so many Americans can afford, but feel sorry and want to change the fact that there are millions of working Americans who have no health care. And deal with it that way.

Q: Don’t discard the “New Realism” but also don’t overlook the strengths that you’re building on?

MONDALE: Right. Right.

* * *

VIDEOGRAPHER JUDY DEHAAS: I’m curious, do you feel like the candidates are giving speeches like you’re wanting? Like what you’re envisioning?

MONDALE: Most of what I’m hearing. I’d say it my own way. One of the key challenges in this campaign is to try to get working Americans of modest income to feel that we know and we want to change and improve their lives in ways that would make a real difference. Health care is a good example. And because . . . If we can do that, I think we will win. If we don’t do that, if they become Reagan Democrats again and just totally disappointed and cynical about us, then I think we lose.

Q: Because you had to go through all of those questions of diversity, first woman on the ticket, are we ready? Do you have those questions anymore about whether we’re ready for an African-American president or a woman president?

MONDALE: I don’t have those questions, I would have been willing to do that in my lifetime or before. I think the great march for civil rights in America was absolutely essential, but was behind the times. We were 200 years late. But we did it and I think it’s good. I think Americans are now much more aware of the potential for Americans if we open these doors than they were 25 years ago, 30 years ago. Are they aware enough? I don’t know. We’ve got to take that deep breath and argue this stuff out. And I think we win, and I think we’ll be a lot better country when we do.

Q: I have a very quick question about the city where I was born: San Francisco, Jeane Kirkpatrick’s favorite city. We’re talking about . . .

MONDALE: “San Francisco Democrats.” Right. That was a bad speech. That part of her speech was bad.

Q: It did become a little bit of a bumper sticker.

MONDALE: It did, but I think that has changed. The idea that people who are gay are somehow suspect, brought this thing on themselves, and shouldn’t be part of acceptable American life, I think there has been big change in that. How much of a change I don’t know. But the “San Francisco Democrat” pitch was designed to signal that we had gays in our party and they didn’t — the last half of which was false. But, no. I think that has changed a lot, too. I think there’s a much better environment for arguing against exclusions, breaking down barriers, giving people opportunity for their lives, the same way a lot of us . . .

I grew up, my dad was a poor farm minister along the Iowa border. We never lived in a town of 1,000 people. We never had any money. Just fine. But because of the G.I. Bill I was able to go through law school and pursue my dream. I think George McGovern could tell the same story. Just hundreds of thousands, maybe a couple million people like me who came back from the military and because of the G.I. Bill were able to do something that they simply couldn’t have afforded otherwise. I think it has changed. Incidentally, this year I see that Obama is calling for a G.I. Bill for the Iraqi veterans. We should pass that, absolutely.

Q: Some of the other conventions are fascinating, and you mentioned a couple just in passing, ’76 and ’80. That 1980 convention, it has gotten a little attention lately as people are wondering what’s going to happen this fall. How damaging was that last-second attempt by Sen. Kennedy to continue the fight?

MONDALE: I think it was terrible. It wasn’t just that convention night. We had had an unresolved national campaign for the nomination. It came down to Kennedy and Carter. Carter was the incumbent. Kennedy came to the convention trying to break up the alliances we had that were surely going to nominate Carter for re-election by trying to change the rules and bust away support. So in those last, say the last month or so leading up to the election, when it was clear that Carter probably had the nomination, it would have been nice if Kennedy could have found a way to run his campaign if he had wanted to but to be positive and not create tension. But he didn’t do that. I think it was hard for him to accept. And his speech at our ’84 (actually 1980) convention was not a plea for unity, not a plea for the re-election of Carter. It was a plea to Americans not to forget how good they were and how their day would come. The dream would never die and all that stuff. And there were a lot of people going out of that convention, who were going out of there, out there to fight for Teddy Kennedy. They weren’t . . . Ted, as I thought he would and he did, helped Carter in the campaign. I think he wanted Carter to win. But that convention, and the stuff, meant that we couldn’t raise money, it all went into that fight. We couldn’t unify behind a theme until after the convention, because all we were doing, all the stories were about the fights that were going on. We couldn’t have a strong convention. I think if you have a weak, divided convention, the American people say you can’t govern because you don’t have your own family together. All you’re going to do is squabble. So I think how that convention comes out . . . So I’m hopeful this time that this will be a message of solid unity.

Q: What was happening behind the scenes? Were you and President Carter talking to Sen. Kennedy or his people through intermediaries?

MONDALE: Oh, sure.

Q: What kind of talks did you have?

MONDALE: There was no lack of discussion. Teddy is an old friend of mine. I knew all the people around him as well. And I’d talk to him every time that I’d see him. But Ted had this thing in him that he wanted to be nominated. He thought he could be nominated. I think the burden of Camelot, the tragedy in their family, two murdered brothers, he’s the youngest son. He has this whole legacy of the Kennedy years. This is his time to do it. And I think some of those burdens are easier to describe than to bear.

Q: When you were watching this race, the 2008 race, have you had flashbacks to that, saying, “I hope we don’t get there” or “I don’t think we’ll get there”? Was there ever a moment during 2008 where you worried, “Oh, here we go again”?

MONDALE: Yeah, I think a lot of people did. You know, I went through the ’68 election with my friend Hubert (Humphrey). And we almost won that thing. But a lot of that division, it was the war that tore apart the ’68 convention, made misery out of Hubert and lives and everything. You got to the end, we almost won it but not quite because there were still people . . . The vestiges of those fights do not totally dissipate. So Humphrey wasn’t good enough, so we got Nixon that time. I was with Carter in ’80 when Carter wasn’t good enough. So John Anderson ran, some other people ran, and of course Kennedy ran. We were able to get substantial unity back before the election, but not enough. There were still vestiges of resentment and so on, so we got Reagan. And in the last election, John Kerry was not good enough for Ralph Nader, and although Nader got 2 1/2 percent, that was enough to deny the Democratic election, even in states where we were a few votes apart. (Note: He said Kerry, but he might be referring to Al Gore’s loss in 2000.) So I have a lot of respect for what committed, unrelenting dissonance can do to deny a majority party a chance of being elected, even when the results of that strategy means that something totally contrary to what you believe is the alternative. So I am very sobered by my experience, and that’s why I’m so anxious that we have this campaign and then we get together. It has to be real ground. You can’t paste it together, staple it together. It has got to be a real basis for optimism. And I think that’s what I’m hearing from the Democrats. They know we have to have this. It has been good for us. But then can we go on?

And the reason I am optimistic is that there really are no big difference. In ’68 we had that war. In ’80 we had a lot of problems with the economy, and we were incumbents and we were accountable. So this time we don’t have that. In fact, they have it. They have the war, the deficit, the bad economy. So we’ve got a better field to deal with this problem by far than some of those earlier conventions.

Q: But why do we see in the polls right now? I’ve seen some of these polls where they ask Hillary Clinton supporters: “If Hillary is not the nominee would you vote for Barack Obama?” No. And vice-versa. And how do you overcome that?

MONDALE: See, that’s what worries me. Some of that I think will dissipate once we have a nominee and if we have a good convention in Denver, that’s going to make a big difference. But it’s something that we really have to worry about. Why do so many people whose lives should make them Democrats hang back? How can we better communicate? There’s a lot of I think — I don’t want to use the word cynicism — but there’s a lot of people that have kind of given up on the public process. They don’t think anything has . . . Government never works. And we’ve got to find some way of really infusing them with some hope. And if we get those elements right, I think we could have a very good year. And I’d like to see a transformational year, in other words, not just another administration but where we could really do some things that need to be done, because our problems now are not minor, they’re big, and almost every one of them involves heavy lifting.

Q: So how would you do it, let’s say you brought Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a room right now, how do you do it?

MONDALE: I haven’t been talking about what I might do, so I can’t really answer that . . .

Q: In general, how does the party set aside whatever has gone on up to this point . . .

MONDALE: As I said, I think it’s really possible this time because people want to win, they want change, they don’t like the course we’re on. The differences between the two candidates now on the issues are very modest, minor. It’s not a war or something that’s dividing us. I think that when those last primaries are over, if our candidates and their chief staff would pledge to the American people that they get two good nights sleep, one night, sleep in late, another night, sleep in late, and then get together and resolve it. Don’t have the meeting until you’ve had a good sleep. Things always look better.

* * *

Q: They must be at a point where they’re exhausted, everyone’s exhausted.

MONDALE: You can see it in their eyes.

Q: It’s funny when you wrote the thing in your speech where you said, “I got these (bags under his eyes) the old fashioned way . . .”

MONDALE: I earned them. Yeah, that’s right. Well, you know, what you go through in those campaigns in terms of interminable 18-hour days, 24/7 for two or three years with all the emotional challenges, issues. And now in these years they’ve got this split-second immediacy of everything. When I ran, you know, there might be, the news called it a news cycle. It might be an eight-hour cycle. If somebody said something, you might have four or five hours, you get your statement in there and they’ll be on the evening news together. Now, uhnt-uh. Now, two seconds later you’re on YouTube or whatever it is. Much different. Tougher.

Q: We’re taking laptop computers. I did this myself down in Iowa. Laptop computer. Sen. Clinton says something out of the side of her mouth the wrong way, “Send,” and it’s there.

MONDALE: Right there. And they say all the conversations you have with your friends, or someone you’re shaking hands with people and you say something to them, that could be on the evening news.

Q: They actually have those microphones, those telescopic microphones that can get someone right there. I just want to ask one last, overall question and this is a chance for you to add anything that has been on your chest. What advice as we’re going into Denver, what are the one or two things that you think they really need to think about? It could be about the color of the balloons. It could be something small. It could be about the way they schedule things, or the speakers they pick. But what advice to you really want them . . .

MONDALE: I would like them to show stature. I mean, these campaigns tend to be mud fights and it’s very hard to get across serious fundamental ideas or concepts. At that convention, we will have a brief opportunity, like at no other time, for about 30 minutes, to make the case. You’ve got time to prepare it. It ought to be the best speech ever made. And not just a tub-thumper, but something that hits people up here and up here, so they say, “Yes, this is where we want to go. And these are the leaders.”

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