TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/76elect/76elect.09a

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                                                                                October 25, 1976

THE RUNNING MATES

Slugfest in a Houston Alley


     They started with smiles and Senator Robert Dole saying
that he hoped it would be a "fun evening." They ended with
bitter exchanges and Senator Walter Mondale calling his opponent
a "hatchet man." The debate last week between the two vice-
presidential candidates -- the first such session in the
nation's history -- turned out to be a tart and often engrossing
display of political theater, a duel between two evenly matched
men whose debating skills had been sharply honed during the wars
on Capitol Hill. Both Mondale and Dole sometimes articulated the
views of their top bananas more concisely and with better effect
than Jimmy Carter and Jerry Ford had been able to do during
their debates.

     As expected, the exchanges in Houston's starkly modern
Alley Theater introduced no new names into the campaign. But
the strongly liberal Democrat and the strongly conservative
Republican did deal sharply, if too simplistically, with the
basic issues of the election. There were even touches of humor
as Dole got off some typical one-liners. he was induced to run
for the vice presidency, he deadpanned at the start, because the
job involved "indoor work and no heavy lifting."

     Mondale overcame his initial nervousness and stiffness as
the 75-minute session wore on, emphasized the Democrats' main
domestic issues. "The question," he said, "is what will we do
to deal with the human problems of America?" His answer,
delivered with few explanatory details: Attack
unemployment(while still fighting inflation); reform taxes to
"bring relief to the average income earner"; improve health
care, housing, education and programs for the elderly. It was
a more or less standard liberal Democratic shopping list. In
reply, Dole said that the American people were turned off by
"promises and promises and bigger and bigger spending programs
and more and more inflation," which he called "the cruelest
tax."

     The Bunny Vote. On foreign policy, Dole stoutly defended
Republican policies and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a
villain to the G.O.P. right wing and a man Carter has criticized
for his "Lone Ranger" brand of statesmanship. Mondale argued
vaguely for a more open foreign policy consistent with American
democratic principles. He dragged in Ford's blooper about
Eastern Europe's being free of Soviet domination. It was, he
said, "probably one of the most outrageous statements made by
a President in recent  political history."

     As the evening went on, the exchanges grew more and more
acrimonious. "My opponent voted against Medicare -- can you
imagine?" asked Mondale. He also charged that Dole had tried to
remove TV cameras from the Ervin committee hearings on
Watergate. Dole, in turn, said that Mondale "wants to spend your
money and tax and tax and spend and spend.' Mondale, Dole
wisecracked, was so completely under labor's thumb that AFL-CIO
President George Meany was probably his makeup man. As for
Carter, Dole said that the Democratic nominee had three
positions on every issue, which was why he had to have three
debates with Ford. The Republican also brought up Carter's
Playboy interview, noting, "We'll give him the bunny vote."

     Probably the greatest gaffe of the evening -- one that
might have given Mondale an ultimate edge -- was Dole's
ill-considered remark that World War I, World War II, the Korean
War and Vietnam were all "Democrat wars" that killed 1.6 million
Americans. Retorted Mondale: "I think Senator Dole has richly
earned his reputation as a hatchet man tonight. Does he really
mean to suggest that there was a partisan difference over our
involvement...to fight Nazi Germany?"

     The two most vitally interested viewers of the debate, not
surprisingly, came to quite different conclusions about the
outcome. President Ford phoned Dole to say "You were superb.
You were confident. You hit hard but hit fairly. " Jimmy Carter
told Mondale: "Fritz, you did great, man...You didn't get small,
you didn't get mean, you didn't get twisted in your approach."

     Campaign Gofers. As the debate showed, Dole and Mondale are
a bright pair of second bananas -- hard-working, tough, loyal,
reasonably reconciled to their status as glorified campaign
gofers. They make an interesting contrast -- old colleagues and
old opponents from the Senate, Dole to the right of Ford,
Mondale to the left of Carter.

     Soldiering on, Dole has hit 36 states, Mondale 40. They
bend the ear of everyone who will listen, undismayed by the fact
that a Harris poll released earlier this month showed that many
voters did not really know what they stood for -- 45% in the
case of Mondale, 50% in the case of Dole.

     Dole has managed to remain unruffled despite occasionally
haphazard scheduling. Once he was stranded at a Kentucky horse
farm for an hour, talking to a single man -- the manager. The
candidate tried to shrug it off. Asked if he had a campaign
plan, Dole once said, "No, I just have an airplane."

     Indeed, Dole's greatest asset on the stump has turned out
to be his humor. But Ford did not select Dole as his running
mate just for the laughs he might bring. A former G.O.P.
national chairman, Dole can peel skin as well as tickle ribs.
Dole accuses Carter of vaulting ambition and questions his
"weird performance, his judgment" in the wake of the Playboy
interview.

     For all his wit, Dole can be a crashing bore when
delivering remarks. Speaking to the Commonwealth Club in San
Francisco about the evils of entrusting the economy to Carter,
Dole put the master of ceremonies to sleep, right at the head
table. While the Senator can he charming in a small group, he
has little rapport with the 20 or so reporters who ride in the
back of the red, white and blue jet called the "Bob Dole
Campaign Express."

     In contrast, Mondale runs a much more relaxed operation.
Having abandoned his own fling for the presidency in 1974
because, as he frankly admitted, he lacked the "overwhelming
desire" to fight for the office, he is at ease as Carter's
lieutenant. Both men are from small-town backgrounds; both are
populists with an instinctive aversion to power elites.

     Mondale's job is to build bridges between the Georgian and
the main bastions of the party -- the unions, the ethnics, the
big- city liberals of the North. With his impeccable liberal
credentials (an approval rating of 94% in 1975 from the
Americans for Democratic Action). Mondale is waging an
issues-oriented campaign, attacking Ford for mishandling the
economy, ignoring social problems and doing the farmer dirt.

    "Minnesota Fritz."  Mondale's schedule is mapped out by the
headquarters in Atlanta and his jet -- known as the "Minnesota
Fritz" -- is in constant communication with Carter's "Peanut
One." Even so, Mondale, as he emphasized in the debate, is free
to differ with Carter on key issues. A case in point occurred
in September when the Georgian criticized the Supreme Court
under Chief Justice Earl Warren for going "too far" in
protecting the accused -- an attempt by Carter to woo Middle
America. Mondale, a former attorney general of Minnesota,
promptly praised the Warren Court for guarding the
"constitutional rights of defendants."

     As the campaign has proceeded, Mondale has become more
relaxed. He has also displayed a sense of humor of his own. To
labor audiences, Mondale says: "A working person who would vote
Republican is like a chicken who would vote for Colonel
Sanders." After Ford made his blunder about Eastern Europe,
Mondale had a story for the occasion. "When I was in Poland, a
cab driver explained to me how the system worked, `We have a
fifty-fifty deal with the Russians: we send them coal and they
send us snow.'"

     Unlike Dole, Mondale is at ease with correspondents. After
a long day, he sometimes strolls -- in his stocking feet -- to
the back of the jet to chat with the reporters stowed there.
Earlier this month, he walked jauntily down the aisle with a
copy of a Harris poll stuck ostentatiously in his dark blue
vest. "Poll? What poll?" he asked with elaborate innocence,
obviously delighted that the voters surveyed by Harris preferred
him to Dole, 48% to 36%. Even in the South, where Mondale's
liberal record had been expected to be an albatross, he outrated
Dole, 48% to 37%.

     Both Dole and Mondale boned up diligently for last week's
debate. The Kansan spent seven or eight hours a day poring over
a 1 1/2-ft.-high stack of black-bound briefing books. Dole, who
was fighting a cold, readily admitted that he was edgy, though
once the cameras blinked on, it was he who seemed the more
relaxed of the two. "Conservatives get a little nervous before
the battle,' he cracked. "Liberals never get nervous. They
always vote yes." Appearing before a Tennessee audience, Dole
downplayed the coming debate. "If you're not otherwise
occupied," he said, "tune in. There'll be no commercial
interruptions. No interruption for anything. Probably nothing,
period."

     Dole was wrong: in its own way, the debate helped to
enliven -- and even to focus more sharply -- the 1976
presidential campaign.