The Nation: Mondale: Hard-Driving Optimist

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At the Democratic National Convention, Fritz Mondale rashly promised to put in more hours politicking each day than even his indefatigable running mate, Jimmy Carter. Last week, after rising before the sun, Mondale formally began his part of the Democratic campaign at Washington's National Airport, enthusiastically shaking every profferred hand—and even a mechanic's leg that was dangling from an airplane's cargo hold. Then he boarded a chartered Boeing 727 to begin a weeklong, dawn-to-midnight campaign swing that took him to 14 cities in eleven states. But at midweek, when his speeches began going flat, aides had to insert rest periods in his fatiguing schedule, and Mondale admitted defeat. Said he: "Nobody gets up earlier than Jimmy Carter."

Even so, Mondale's energetic campaigning erased any lingering doubts about his drive and stamina. The questions had been raised because, in dropping out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in November 1974, he said he lacked an "overwhelming desire" for the office. Aides attribute some of Mondale's new zeal to the fact that his partisan appetite has been whetted by the chance to go after Gerald Ford and Robert Dole instead of fellow Democrats. Then, too, Mondale has a sense of impending victory—an optimism that was missing during the primaries. Says he: "The issues are cutting with us. The Ford Administration isn't going anywhere. It's dead." The party's new unity was tonic as well. As Mondale noted during a flight from New Mexico to Iowa, "The hostility, bitterness, rudeness, vulgarity—you don't see that this year."

For so young a campaign, the Mondale effort seemed surprisingly well organized. Rather than aiming just for large crowds last week, schedulers set up a variety of small group meetings. One morning, for example, Mondale saw no more than 150 people at three labor hiring halls in Los Angeles, then went on to San Diego, where he talked to a handful of workers and officers at the U.S. naval base. Mondale called this low-keyed approach "listening and learning," explaining that it was patterned after Carter's early efforts to get in touch with the American people. Indeed, Mondale frequently told his audiences that Ford is "sitting behind his desk practicing being President. He should get out and earn it." The small, more intimate settings have another advantage that Mondale did not mention: they make for good television.