Walter Mondale and me

I started at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 2001, just a week before 9/11. For me, and so many other first-year college students, this was a defining feature of the next four years. I was busy with work, internships, and other activities at a large public university and found that while I had many great professors, I don’t recall developing significant relationships with any of them, nor did I in graduate school, with the exception of one class. 

While attending the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs in 2006, I was selected for a seminar course led by former Vice President Walter Mondale and supervised by Professor Larry Jacobs. The class was featured in the documentary Fritz: The Walter Mondale Story. As part of the class, students identified different sections of Mondale’s biography and did original research based on his newly released papers at the Minnesota Historical Society. I chose to research his role as campaign manager for his friend and mentor Hubert Humphrey, who had waged an unsuccessful presidential bid in the tumultuous year of 1968. It was a fascinating experience to learn about such an important period in American history with so many epic characters like Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Eugene McCarthy; and to get a sense of what life was like in a year of protests, assassinations, and war. I’ve always wanted to turn my paper into a book (someday).

Mr. Mondale was an engaging professor, generous with his time and willingness to share his personal experiences. In one of my memorable email exchanges with him, I asked him what lessons he took with him from 1968 that he used in his own campaigns. Besides the need to run a disciplined campaign (Humphrey’s campaigns were an apparent study in disarray), Mr. Mondale stressed the need to be yourself, work hard, and be kind. He remembered Hubert Humphrey as one of the most gifted orators of the 20^th century, a superlative he said he would emulate but never achieve. In his email, he wrote:

“Humphrey was a magnificent speaker and performer. I couldn't match that so I tried to compensate by working carefully on my speeches, doing some of my own research and reading, and connecting with people through friendship and kindness. We were very close friends but very different personalities. I did not try to be a Humphrey clone; I tried to be myself as unimpressive as that was and is.” 

Besides his obvious humility, I was struck by his comment about “connecting with people through friendship and kindness” and the need to be diligent and work hard. From him, I learned that you don’t need to be gifted to do great things. As a fellow small-town Midwesterner interested in a career in public service, I was really inspired by him and could relate to his approach. I found him to be the ideal of what I thought of a public servant to be—honest, grounded, generous, smart, and always focused on improving people’s lives. He also had a great sense of humor that most people didn’t know. The class was a defining experience of my time in higher education.