In VP hunt, something is very familiar

WASHINGTON - He was a Navy veteran running an outsider campaign for the White House, eyeing a potential young running mate from Minnesota.

The year was 1976, and Jimmy Carter, the Georgia Democrat with the toothy smile, needed help in the Midwest and in the U.S. Senate, where Walter Mondale carried the mantle of Hubert Humphrey liberalism.

The way Mondale became Carter's vice president, and the way he unalterably shaped the office, could have portents for another Minnesotan who is being considered for the position: Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a co-chair of John McCain's GOP presidential campaign.

Mondale, the last vice president from Minnesota, got the job by dint of his Washington experience, his corn-fed image and Minnesota's importance as a battleground state -- it had gone to Richard Nixon in 1972, the last time a Republican has carried the state in a presidential election.

For Carter, a governor who hadn't spent much time in Washington, geography was less important than merit and political connections.

"I'm sure Carter was looking for someone who could understand and influence how Washington worked, and he made no bones about that," Mondale said in an interview last week as the 2008 Democratic primaries wrapped up.

Pawlenty doesn't offer much Washington experience. But then McCain, a longtime veteran of the Senate, isn't looking for an old Washington hand. Like Mondale, Pawlenty would bring a whiff of the heartland and a fresh face unblemished by scandal. Mondale was 48 when he joined the Carter ticket in the summer of 1976. Pawlenty will turn 48 in November.

'Executivizing' the office

On "Fox News Sunday," Pawlenty indicated for the first time that he'd be receptive to being McCain's running mate. Should he be selected and go the distance to the White House, he would also assume a role that was greatly expanded by Mondale, who is widely credited with creating the modern vice presidency -- what Mondale called "executivizing" the office.

"The only thing I didn't want was a ceremonial office," said Mondale, who will be a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Reflecting on his veep years, Mondale said he told Carter during a visit to his home in Plains, Ga., "Please don't ask me if this is just going to be a traditional funeral attending position."

He also took the job, despite early misgivings, on the advice of Humphrey, his old friend and mentor in the Senate. Humphrey had famously felt slighted as Lyndon Johnson's vice president a decade earlier. Despite some unhappy memories, Humphrey saw the office as a great opportunity.

Mondale recalls Humphrey's advice: "He said 'I think I'm a better man because of it, and I think you'd have the same experience.'"

Carter had come to the same conclusion as Mondale about the nature of the new vice presidency. "The vice presidency had really been a backwater office throughout all of our history," said Moe, now president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "Both of them thought this should be something different."

The Carter-Mondale model meant an office for the vice president in the West Wing, as well as full access to the president and the information flow in the White House. That had never happened before.

"Mondale and Carter really did transform the American vice presidency," said David Schultz, who teaches politics at Hamline University in St. Paul. "So when you get to Dick Cheney, he really has to thank Walter Mondale to a large part, because Mondale created the precedent for a powerful vice presidency."

In Mondale's view, Cheney has taken his model "off the rails" in terms of the wide influence he is perceived to wield in the Bush White House.

"I have no argument with the fact that Mondale qualitatively changed the vice presidency," said Mitch Pearlstein, president of the Center of the American Experiment, a think tank in Minneapolis. "But I would also argue that people like Mondale and others on the left are upset with Cheney, not necessarily because he is a strong vice president, but because they disagree with him."

'No divorce'

However a vice president uses the levers of power, the importance of personal chemistry is often missed in all the popular speculation about running mates, Mondale said.

"Under the new executivized relationship, it's like a four-year marriage, and if it goes bad, there's no divorce. You're just there. And it's really destructive."

Unlike Mondale and Carter, who barely knew each other until they met in Plains, Pawlenty and McCain have bonded over the years and know each other well.

"He had been a strong civil rights advocate from Georgia," Mondale said. "That was unheard of."

But Carter, an ex-submariner regarded as a moderate Democrat, was still far outside the liberal mainstream of the Democratic Party in the mid-1970s, a period right after Watergate. That's where Mondale came in. "He was an insurgent, and he thought I could help there," Mondale said.

McCain, an ex-Navy aviator, is also seen as something of a maverick inside his party. In picking Pawlenty, whom many Washington pundits regard as a front-runner for the job, he would be running with a more mainstream Republican with strong ties to the Bush administration.

While some analysts question whether any running mate really makes a difference to voters, others say that every little thing counts, even if it's only a percentage point or two of the vote. "In a close race," Pearlstein said, "one or two percentage points might well be critical."

Whatever the political calculation for either side, it must end with a win.

Kevin Diaz • 202-408-2753