August 14, 2008 11:35 PM
Lessons of 1984
Today we present chapter five of the Rocky Mountain News' "Unconventional Wisdom" series, featuring some notable characters of past Democratic National Conventions offering their advice for Sen. Barack Obama, convention organizers, the city of Denver and average voters watching at home.
To follow the entire series, bookmark this link HERE. And keep checking back.
Part 5 of 10
Walter Mondale, San Francisco 1980
The story by M.E. Sprengelmeyer is HERE.
The video by Judy DeHaas is HERE.
The transcript of the Mondale interview is HERE.
Portraits are by Chris Schneider.
Below is a bit of the back story on the making of the 1984 chapter.
* * *
I was in high school, still a few months too young to vote, in that year that George Orwell warned us about:
1984
But as a budding political junkie, I followed that year's presidential election as closely as I watched the baseball pennant race that year. (That's saying a lot, considering my beloved Chicago Cubs were making a rare appearance in the playoffs. Go Ryno!)
My high school history teacher, H.C. Dennis, spurred my enthusiasm the previous fall, sharing the weekly candidate profiles from the Washington Post magazine. I ate up every word and became convinced that Sen. John Glenn, the former astronaut, would be unstoppable.
As the primaries went on, my friend, Steve, and most of the other high school kids who were paying attention - and there weren't many of them - were rooting for the young upstart in the race, Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado.
But that wasn't to be.
Instead, Democrats settled on what now seems like an obvious front-runner, former Vice President Walter Mondale.
I remember everything about the general election campaign - Mondale's San Francisco convention, President Reagan's re-nomination in Dallas, the gloriously abstract "Bear in the Woods" ad that left viewers with the impression that Mondale would literally be eaten by the Soviet Union's mascot.
I remember, right up to the end, thinking that this titanic struggle would go down to the wire. It would be a real nail biter. I never imagined it would be an historic blowout.
But that thought had crossed Mondale's mind.
People remember their first presidential elections. I know that because of how many people with touches of gray hair have come up to me to add details to the earlier chapters in this series on McGovern v. Nixon and others.
For me, that 1984 contest was the start of a political observer career. So it meant a lot to me that the former Vice President would sit down with us for more than an hour - looking exactly the same as he had way back when - and explain the big, bold things he had to try because he knew this was an uphill battle, to put it mildly.
I learned a lot from that chat in Minneapolis, and if you read the full chapter you might, too.
And I also got to confess something to one of the larger-than-life figures of my youth.
As I told Mondale, I was so upset that my birth date left me still too young to vote that, what the heck, I decided to register to vote anyway. The state of New Mexico sent me a voter registration card and everything. But as the election approached, I chickened-out, fearing I would be convicted of voter fraud and spend the rest of my life in jail.
I never told Mondale how the 17-year-old me might have voted. But he flashed me a real wide smile, as if that was all that was standing between him and the White House.
"Thanks for trying," he said.
(See the full transcript for the rest of the story.)
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