A forgotten influence recently came to mind with the news of Walter Mondale’s death. The memory took me back to Augustana College as an 18-year-old freshman.
The 1984 presidential campaign featured Democratic presidential candidate Mondale, and I was one of a small group of Young Democrats on campus.
Like me, he was a Minnesota native, and my political leanings were beginning to take root in his Democratic ideals.
Through the years I have voted for Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It’s the person that draws my attention and how he or she intends to move the nation forward.
I met Mondale in person a couple of years ago at the 2016 Minnesota Newspaper Association Convention. I shook his hand and told him of his influence in my political thinking. Ever so gracious, he thanked me for my support all those years ago and encouraged my continued input into community journalism.
I wrote about that meeting in a 2016 column. I recall him stating that it’s the business of newspapers to ask questions and form public opinion.
Politics and public opinions today are very divisive. It’s also “your view is wrong,” and no solutions or common ground is ever established.
Mondale famously asked “Where’s the beef?” in the 1984 presidential nomination debate. In essence, he asked his Democratic opponents to stop with the BS and bring legitimate ideas to the table for discussion. The sentiment still applies today. “Where’s the beef?” Where are the solutions we can discuss?
I will miss Mondale and those like him in politics today who graciously model what public service and private behavior should be.
In his memoir, “A Good Fight,” he wrote about his confidence that government could be used to better people’s lives, even though it appears that others don’t share the same philosophy. “My faith has not dimmed. But I also came to understand that voters didn’t simply put us in office to write laws or correct the wrongs of the moment. They were asking us to safeguard the remarkable nation our founders left us and leave it better for our children.”
We should all strive to think and act more like Mondale.