One of the challenges of having an aging brain is comparable to owning an iPhone with 31 of 32GBs of memory already filled, the current state of my iPhone 8. The result of this phenomena is a vivid memory of something, but not much recollection of the back story, and sometimes it takes a lot longer to get to the details than one would hope.
For example, I vividly remember taking a trip to Washington, D.C., for a meeting, but I donât remember who I went there with or exactly why. Because I was the executive director of Laurel Arts in Somerset at the time, Iâm thinking the meeting might have had something to do with the National Endowment for the Arts or maybe the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Opinion | Walter Mondale reinvented the vice presidency Both Biden and Harris should thank him for it washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Prior to Carter-Mondale the vice presidency was largely a ceremonial office, mainly serving as a president-in-waiting if anything happened to the incumbent. John Nance Garner, a two-time vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, famously said the office was not worth a bucket warm spit. Spiro T. Agnew took bribes. Lyndon Johnson was bored and humiliated in the role.
That changed under the Mondale model. He and Carter became partners; they had weekly lunches, and the vice president was designated not just for assignments but involved in every policy discussion and decision. “He had unprecedented access to the president,” noted Richard Moe, who was Mondale s chief of staff.
Former Senator and Jimmy Carter’s Vice President Walter Mondale died Monday of undisclosed causes.
But the 93-year-old Minnesotan knew the end was near. He made a round of weekend farewell calls to Democratic friends, including Joe Biden, a close political pal from their Senate days together (1964-1976).
A small-town Midwestern native, a minister’s son and student of Hubert Humphrey, Mondale was a decent, interesting man, one of those political dinosaurs, now long extinct, who could remain friends with opponents who were not progressives like himself. Opponents, in turn, returned the favor.
In those days before cable TV, senators of both parties shared a strange belief that compromise could produce half a loaf for each side. They deemed this better than bitterness for everyone and no loaves for anyone, themselves or voters back home. Versus staged acrimonious sound bites for partisan viewers. You may have noticed those cross-aisle days have given