Walter Mondale reflected on legacy of former President Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter sought international peace and stability, quality education and environmental protections during a turbulent four years in office, said his second-in-command, Walter Mondale.

Mondale, a former vice president and Minnesota senator who died in April 2021, reflected on Carter’s background, presidency and legacy in November 2019.

He described Carter as a devout Baptist and fellow small-town kid who wanted to be seen for what he did and wrote. Later in life, Mondale said he enjoyed watching his friend belatedly earn Americans' admiration, noting at the time, “Carter’s place in the country has been rising.”

Carter, the longest-lived American president, died Sunday. He was 100 years old.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Carter chose you as his running mate after a visit at his home in Plains, Ga. What was your impression of him then?

A: We had a lot in common. We were both small-town kids. I was from Ceylon and Elmore [Minn.], and he was from Plains. And we both had a background in Christianity. My dad was a preacher, and he was a devout Baptist. … The depth of our common faiths made a big difference, and as the years went on and things got tough, I came to rely on that common background that we had to keep us going. And it did.

Q: You were the first vice president with a White House office. Did you need to persuade Carter to change your role?

A: He was all for it. ... We took it out of no man’s land and into the West Wing. I saw the president many times a day. I was free to go in there and talk about what I wanted to, whenever I wanted to.

Q: Did Carter, a former Georgia governor, draw on your congressional experience?

A: One day we were sitting in, I think Blair House [the president’s guesthouse] — that’s before the president went in to take the oath of office and before he’d been in the White House — and he said, “What’s it like?” I said, “Are you asking me what the White House is like?” [Laughs] ... He was elected president and he’d never been in the White House. I had been around a lot, I had been up on the Hill a lot. Well, I lived on the Hill. And I had a lot of friends around the executive branch, and so on. So I think he thought he needed someone like me to fill in the blanks.

Q: President Carter has written more than 30 books. Are there certain stances he felt the need to clarify?

A: He felt a need to explain himself. Not to justify himself, but just so the public better understood him. ... He didn’t have much confidence, or didn’t have much interest, in explaining himself as a typical politician would do. That was not who he was. He wanted to be seen for what he wrote, what he did. ... So I think one of the reasons he may have written a lot of these books is to explain himself in a different way.

Q: He was a religious man who was committed to telling truth. Did that have political ramifications?

A: He played it straight. That meant a lot to me. He wanted his administration to stand for international peace and stability. He wanted his government to stand for good education, sound education. He was the first president to get really serious about the environment. He knew something about the science of it. ... We set up the Department of Energy under him. He put people in there that were serious students of this issue. I think he’ll go down as a pioneering voice, before the country had really gotten into it, for environmental protection.

Q: What was Carter’s approach to governing amid the frustration of the 444-day Iran hostage crisis?

A: When the rescue mission was en route, we did everything we could to look like we were nonchalant, that there was nothing was going on. ... Once in a while I would sneak in when I knew the president was alone and ask him how it was coming. And the last time when he said, “Well, not very good. It just failed.” ... GIs were killed there. It was sad, really sad.

Q: How did Carter personally navigate that tragedy?

A: He was a deeply crestfallen guy, no question about it. He had hoped that this rescue mission would end the issue and put him out in front. Instead of that it did just the opposite. It kept the issue going, put him behind further and yeah, really tough. And that issue of getting the hostages out plagued us for the rest of our term.

Q: After the White House, the Carters returned to the $167,000 house they built in 1961. Why did they choose to continue living a comparatively frugal life in Plains?

A: He’s a farm person and he had this home in Plains that they had lived in, raised their family in, and he went back there. He also was building the Carter Library in Atlanta and in that library was a place that they could live, connected with Emory University. He and [his wife] Rosalynn both loved that place ... and this is where Carter is at his best. He works on issues, he travels. He tries to unravel tough problems to get them solved.

Q: How often did you communicate in recent years, and what would you talk about?

A: He has an annual Carter conference, where he brings in people from around the country. ... We go over issues that concern us now, go over the history of our administration. One of the things we kind of enjoy is that Carter’s place in the country has been rising. As people look at things, remember what he said, maybe watch what this president [Donald Trump] is doing, he becomes more impressive to the American people. And I feel that everywhere when I’m around him. He’s finally earned a different and better place in the opinion of many Americans. And so we enjoy that, finally.

This story contains information from the Associated Press.