Walter Mondale invented the consequential, modern vice presidency, but no one ever would have thought to call a movie about his political career "Vice."
That label simply wouldn't have fit the virtuous Minnesotan who served as our 42nd and most creative vice president two decades before Dick Cheney became the most powerful holder of the second office, at least for a while, and was given the first word of its title by detractors as a nickname.
With Mondale's 91st birthday last weekend and with "Vice" in the theaters, it's worth reflecting on the respective public services of these two vice presidents for the contrasting values and approaches to democratic governance they represent.
The careers of Mondale and Cheney overlapped. After Mondale contributed to Jimmy Carter's 1976 victory against President Gerald Ford, Cheney — Ford's chief of staff — was among those out of work. In designing the new vice presidency, Mondale learned from the failed service of his predecessor, Nelson Rockefeller, who was frustrated by Cheney's efforts. The presidency escaped Mondale in 1984 and Cheney in 1996, but the latter later saw the new vice presidency, the office Mondale had created, as an institution where he could exercise influence.
If their careers intersected principally in their service as vice president, they diverged, quite sharply, in their competing visions of public service and the manner in which they discharged their duties.
Mondale saw public service as a calling that provided opportunity to help vulnerable populations. As a young Minnesota attorney general, he helped persuade colleagues and the U.S. Supreme Court that indigent defendants in felony cases had a constitutional right to be provided counsel. As a senator, he fought to protect minorities and children living in poverty. Mondale was the first presidential candidate to select a woman as his running mate when he designated U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, and he chose her after a search that considered several women, African-American and Hispanic candidates when few in those demographic groups held high office. Considering so many unconventional candidates was unprecedented and subjected Mondale to criticism, but he was a pluralist committed to opening doors.
Cheney, by contrast, opposed creating the Department of Education (which Mondale championed), initially opposed honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with a holiday, and voted to sustain President Ronald Reagan's veto of economic sanctions against South Africa due to apartheid nine years after Mondale had told South Africa's leader that his country's relations with America depended on abandoning that racist policy.
Mondale was in the forefront in the 1970s of efforts to curb the abuses of American intelligence agencies by subjecting them to tighter legal restraints. He believed power must be accountable and used that concept as a book title. Cheney embraced a robust presidency whose constitutional power allowed it to resist such restraining measures.