Mondale’s decency is sorely missed

Sen. Walter Mondale was one of the good guys. He died in his beloved Minnesota this week at the grand old age of 93. He lived a full life. It was full of good work and good times.

He was scrupulously honest, both personally and intellectually. He never promised the undeliverable.

Mondale had a rather severe persona, but underneath it was a quietly happy warrior. And a decent one.

If one word epitomized Walter Mondale, it was decency.

He never engaged in character assassination. He was scrupulously honest, both personally and intellectually. He never promised the undeliverable.

He trusted the people and abided by their decisions, even when some of those decisions must have hurt terribly. He knew when to quit and go back to practicing law. He lived to serve, and not to rule.

Mondale came out of a tradition. He was not one of its founders or its last great champion. But he was one of its greatest exemplars.

That tradition is the Democratic Farmer Labor party of Minnesota — and the type of liberalism it stood for. Its early values were anti-communism and what might be called the liberalism of human dignity.

Its two great founders were Hubert H. Humphrey and Eugene J. McCarthy. Humphrey became the Democratic party’s champion of civil rights and McCarthy the tribune of the limits of presidential and federal power — standing up to Sen. Joe McCarthy, to FBI chief Edgar Hoover and to abuse in the CIA.

Mondale was privileged to serve in the Senate with both men. And he took up their causes pretty much across the board — rights and limits — becoming himself a giant of the Senate.

For example, McCarthy had made the plight of migrant workers one of his concerns. When McCarthy retired from the Senate, Mondale took up that issue.

Of course McCarthy and Humphrey split over the Vietnam war, and Mondale regarded that as tragic.

For the two men were needed, in his view, as a team. Mondale felt the rift caused the demise of the DFL and a certain strain of American progressivism.

The core belief of this strain was that government, for all its very real flaws and the unintended consequences of its errors, could make life better for ordinary citizens. And, furthermore, that this is the only real justification for government.

One of McCarthy’s projects in Congress was the expansion of Social Security disability benefits to the mentally ill, for example. The idea of DFL liberalism is that, little by little, we can progress.

Mondale went on to become the first modern vice president, with power and portfolio. He changed the office.

He ran for president and told the American people the truth about “trickle down” economics and tax cuts. He lost to President Ronald Reagan, who was running for reelection. No one could have beaten Reagan that year, but Mondale got shellacked. He won only his home state and the District of Columbia.

He served, late in his life, as ambassador to Japan.

After Paul Wellstone, the last great, old school DFL senator, died in a plane crash, Mondale, after many years off the stage, ran again for the Senate in his place. He lost.

It was once said of McCarthy that “he lives his values.”

McCarthy said of Humphrey that he knew no hate, or even jealousy, or resentment. He knew only hope and faith.

Mondale held fast to his faith, for all his days. Not only his Lutheran belief that we are each other’s keepers, but his progressive faith: Government can make life better for forgotten people, and all people, and can make the country a better county, if we are honest, do government right, and politicians use power for other than themselves.

It may just be that Mondale’s kind of liberal progressivism is coming round again.

And if so, those who take time to remember him may call him a prophet.

But, even if not, his was a great way to live.