Requiem for ordinary

Once upon a time I might have called it the triumph of the ordinary: A good and decent man makes good and does good in the process.

Too bad that it doesn’t seem so ordinary anymore.

Back then, we had different expectations, even for … especially for … politicians.

And Fritz Mondale lived up to ‘em.

The politics I grew up with was a respectable thing. Good citizens made it a point to get out to vote, then to vote for the man, or, in a rare instance, the woman, who was likely to do the greatest good for the greatest number. It was an era when the most frequently heard partisan complaint was that there “wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference” between Democrats and Republicans. It was a politics that seemed at times to be almost too civil, particularly when issues sparked deep passion and their resolution rested on tepid compromise.

Here in Minnesota, it was a politics shaped and flavored by the likes of Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, and a raft of Minnesota governors by the name of Anderson. It was based in the old-fashioned civic credo that once elected, a candidate was obligated to do the right thing – to look out for the poor, the old and the disadvantaged; to see to it a working stiff could land a good job with good pay and anybody, no matter who they were or where they came from, could get an even break. There was an across-the-aisle agreement and understanding that we were all in this together and, to a greater or lesser degree, government was one way we could get things done.

That was the politics Walter Mondale involved himself in. He was an unabashed liberal, back in a day when “liberal” wasn’t hurled as a social epithet, nor was “conservative” brandished as cultural derision. As he summed it up in his memoir, “I 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.”

At the time Fritz Mondale made his first forays into politics, I was one of those children. He was a politician of my father’s generation. Pure Minnesotan. Pants pressed, buttoned down. About as charismatic as a cornstalk. It seemed a fair guess that a wild night in the Mondale household meant extra marshmallows in the cocoa and staying up past the 10 o’clock news.

He was a preacher’s kid, and, judging by the preacher’s kids I’ve known, he came by that passionate earnestness honestly. At times he may have been too honest for his own good, politically at least. Brought up a thrifty, small town Methodist, he was well aware that good things cost money and if we want good things, we have to pay for them, but telling the nation’s voters taxes were the dues we pay for citizenship was a tough sell on the way to becoming president.

So, we never had a Mondale presidency, and the country’s probably the poorer for it.

I had the privilege of meeting him on several occasions, greeting him first as “Senator,” then as “Mr. Vice President.” Our last encounter was a few years ago and I took the opportunity to have him sign my copy of his memoir, “The Good Fight.” Grinning as he fished for a pen, he quipped that I was among a very small elite group – people who bought his book – and thanked me.

Minnesotan. Always, Minnesotan.

Senator, vice-president, candidate for president, ambassador … years ago he summed up the Carter/Mondale administration’s accomplishments: We told the truth, obeyed the law, and kept the peace. At the time they seemed pretty pedestrian, pretty ordinary.

They don’t seem so ordinary anymore.