The protegee of Hubert Humphrey (and his replacement as senator following Humphrey's election as vice president),
Walter Mondale was a faithful advocate for his policies in the Senate during Humphrey's presidency as well as during the brief Muskie administration. An unabashed liberal, Mondale's first presidential bid in 1980 was a disaster: a fundamental misunderstanding of the post-1968 primary system led him to write off the states of the former Confederacy and allowed South Dakota Senator George McGovern and others to take the votes and delegates of black Democrats who otherwise would have voted for "Fritz". A chastened Mondale soon fell behind and withdrew in support of McGovern, who went on to lose an Electoral College landslide to President Bush. With Minnesota law preventing him from running for both the presidency and his Senate seat, Mondale opted to retire from the Senate in 1984 with his eye on the White House.
He quickly emerged as one of the front-runners, alongside Ohio Senator John Glenn and the two had a long, dragged-out primary season that ended with Glenn finally peeling ahead in April. Mondale opted to withdraw, believing that Glenn would reward him stopping the brutal primaries early with the vice-presidential spot. But Glenn's personal dislike of Mondale and need to shore up support among conservative Democrats resulted in the former astronaut choosing their colleague Lloyd Bentsen of Texas instead. A furious Mondale refused to campaign for Glenn until being persuaded to in October, well after the electorate had gained the impression of the Democrats as a divided party and with it, doubts about Glenn's ability to smoothly handle the affairs of state.
Although out of office, Mondale emerged as the presumptive front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1988 after Glenn's loss. Expecting his strongest challenger to either be New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Delaware Senator Joe Biden or Maine Governor George Mitchell, Mondale was shocked like the rest of the political establishment by the victory of dark horse Kentucky Senator Walter D. Huddleston in the Iowa caucus. Soon, with Mitchell dropping out after losing in an upset in New Hampshire and Biden hospitalized after suffering an aneurysm before Super Tuesday, Huddleston emerged as the front-runner while Cuomo and Mondale fought to be the candidates of the party liberals. By the time Cuomo was forced out and Mondale became the anti-Huddleston candidate, the Kentuckian had already won an insurmountable lead in delegates.
Learning from Glenn's mistake, Huddleston quietly promised Mondale the Secretary of State position if he campaigned for the Democratic ticket in 1988, an offer Mondale gratefully accepted. He became Secretary of State at a momentous time in world history, with the Warsaw Pact disintegrating and Eastern Europe (save the Soviet Union) abandoning communism and the death of Viktor Grishin in 1992 paving the way for an end to the Cold War. Mondale was instrumental in negotiating the Huddleston-Noriega Treaty that returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama and, despite Huddleston's offer to retain him in his second term, opted to retire as as result of disagreement with the president's failed Secure Borders Act and exhaustion with the grueling workload.
In retirement, Mondale worked both as a speaker and professor at the University of Minnesota in addition to remaining active in the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (the state version of the Democratic Party).
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