WALTER F. MONDALE
(Walter Frederick Mondale)
Mondale was contrasting the Carter Administration with that of the then present George W. Bush Administration. The latter had misled the American people about the reasons for the Iraq war, and cabinet members had misled congress while the Vice President’s Chief of Staff was convicted of lying to the Justice Department as well as other transgressions of truth. The administration tried to seize a series of powers and implemented practices that the courts ruled were illegal and the Supreme Court twice ruled their actions illegal. At the time the nation was embroiled in the Iraq War. History may treat the Carter administration differently over time, but the general assessment of historians is that it was a poor to mediocre Presidency. Mondale, compared the Carter Administration to the hapless Bush 41 administration and not to Regan, the elder Bush or the Clinton administrations all of which were generally considered to be much better.
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and lawyer who served as the 42nd vice president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter. A U.S. senator from Minnesota from 1964 to 1976, he was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1984 presidential election, but lost to incumbent Ronald Reagan in an Electoral College and popular vote landslide. Reagan won 49 states while Mondale carried his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. His vice presidential nominee, U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro from New York, was the first female vice-presidential nominee of any major party in U.S. history.
