His vice presidency ended abruptly when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980, and he suffered a humiliating 49-state loss when he ran against Reagan four years later. Nevertheless, Walter Mondale isn't destined to go down in history as a loser.
Indeed, the Minnesota Democrat, who just turned 80, is likely to be remembered as one of those rare figures in American history who, like William Jennings Bryan, Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater, Eugene McCarthy and Al Gore, lost their bids for the White House but left an indelible imprint on the political process while doing so.
Unlike the fire-breathing populist Bryan, the liberal icon Stevenson, the conservative role model Goldwater, the anti-war crusader McCarthy and the save-the-planet-from-global-warming Gore, Mondale has won his place in history as the man who transformed the office of the vice presidency from irrelevancy and impotence to one of genuine importance.
He didn't do it alone. He needed help from Carter, who chose him as his running mate in 1976 and made him the first vice president to have an office in the White House and gave him a portfolio that called for direct involvement in domestic and foreign policy.
"Mondale was the first to recognize the importance of having his office in the West Wing, just a few yards away from the Oval Office," Carter's top domestic policy adviser Stu Eizenstat, said. "That proximity was critically important to make sure that he understood, and was part of, every decision."
Mondale often referred to that proximity to power in the Carter White House by declaring, "Nothing propinques like propinquity." He didn't use that term on Saturday, when former aides Jim Johnson, Maxine Isaacs and Mike Berman threw a belated 80th birthday party (his actual birthday was a week earlier) at Johnson's and Isaac's luxurious penthouse suite on the Potomac River waterfront in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood.
Nor did Mondale, now a member of a prestigious Minneapolis law firm, use one of his favorite lines while campaigning at countless fundraisers in the homes of wealthy backers when he said, with tongue-in-cheek, "Isn't it great what we Democrats have done for public housing?"
Mondale, who later became U.S. ambassador to Japan and lost his bid to return to the Senate as a last-minute stand-in when Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in 2002, told some 65 invited guests, including yours truly -- who served as his vice presidential press secretary -- that he always tried to help Carter win the public's trust.
When Mondale spoke about the office of the vice presidency at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars last year, he said, "I believe that whether you're a Democrat or a Republican in high office, one of your duties is to try to keep the country together." He added, prophetically, that the greatest challenge confronting America in the coming years is restoring public trust. "We're so paralyzed, so divided ... And that's got to change or we're not going to solve anything."
Mondale echoed those words Saturday night, as did those who helped celebrate his 80th birthday, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of the Treasury Bob Rubin, former Assistant Secretary of State Dick Holbrooke, former Senators Paul Sarbanes of Maryland and John Culver of Iowa, and a dozen former aides. When he decried the the divisive rhetoric of the 2008 presidential campaign, you couldn't help but think of other vice presidents -- Dick Cheney and Spiro Agnew come to mind -- who did little to restore public trust in the political process.
Mondale has declared his support for Sen. Hillary Clinton's candidacy, and most of those at his birthday party, including Johnson, Berman and former top aide Dick Moe, have as well. Some, like Johnson and Holbrooke, could be in line for secretary of the Treasury and secretary of State, respectively, should Sen. Clinton win the presidency.
But this wasn't one of those typical Washington parties where people were positioning themselves for power in the next administration. Instead, it was a party where people genuinely wanted to pay tribute to a man who didn't make it to top of the political Mount Everest, but like Sir Edmund Hillary -- who died the day before -- will be remembered as much for his decency and humanity as for what he achieved.
Like his political mentor Hubert Humphrey, and like Democratic Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, Fritz Mondale is part of the authentic Democratic progressive tradition that believes government can and should help improve the lives of all Americans. Whether the Democratic Party of the 21st century believes the same, remains to be seen.