Carter dies in late '78, how does Mondale handle things?

POD: Carter falls some stairs/slips on a bar of soap in the shower and is killed. Walter Mondale is now POTUS. What does he do better/worse than the Peanut Farmer?
 
Not sure that he does any better or worse. Probably about the same. Kennedy might not mount his primary challenge, but I still think Regan wins in 80.
 
I don't think Mondale would make the clums-a-saurus mistake of firing half his cabinet two days after a major speech, which had been well-received to start with.
 
He does better for a couple of primary reasons. The first is that he's going to get a honeymoon and that's going to get him the benefit of the doubt in a way that Carter never did in 1979. People might even give him a break for having to deal with Carter's mess. The second is better relations with Congress. Mondale was a Senator and a reasonably well regarded one. Jawboning and schmoozing Congressional leaders was not one of Carter's strengths, but Mondale was a pol and would do better at it. Mondale is going to have labor in his corner, something Carter never did. In 1978, that still mattered. Perhaps he makes a push for the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill; that act might forestall any primary challenge from Kennedy. You have to remember that while Carter was not from the liberal/labor wing of the party, Mondale was a Humphrey protege and very much part of that wing of the party.

None of this is to say that he would necessarily win in 1980. A lot of things went south in 1979/80 and it is quite possible the same happens to Mondale. But it is possible that he does sufficiently better to make 1980 a contest.
 
Carter did play to strength in some regards, for example, the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords, not everything we may have hoped for, but did largely bring peace between Israel and Egypt.
 
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