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A Life in Liberal Politics
Scribner
October 2010
On Sale: October 5, 2010
384 pages
ISBN: 1439158665
EAN: 9781439158661
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Former vice president Walter Mondale makes a passionate,
timely argument for American liberalism in this revealing
and momentous political memoir. For more than five decades in public life, Walter Mondale
has played a leading role in America's movement for social
change—in civil rights, environmentalism, consumer
protection, and women's rights—and helped to forge the
modern Democratic Party. In The Good Fight, Mondale traces his evolution from a young
Minnesota attorney general, whose mentor was Senator Hubert
H. Humphrey, into a U.S. senator himself. He was
instrumental in pushing President Johnson's Great Society
legislation through Congress and battled for housing
equality, against poverty and discrimination, and for more
oversight of the FBI and CIA. Mondale's years as a senator
spanned the national turmoil of the Nixon administration;
its ultimate self-destruction in the Watergate scandal would
change the course of his own political fortunes. Chosen as running mate for Jimmy Carter's successful 1976
campaign, Mondale served as vice president for four years.
With an office in the White House, he invented the modern
vice presidency; his inside look at the Carter
administration will fascinate students of American history
as he recalls how he and Carter confronted the energy
crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, and other crucial events, many of which
reverberate to the present day. Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election set the
stage for Mondale's own campaign against Reagan in 1984,
when he ran with Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a
major party ticket; this progressive decision would forever
change the dynamic of presidential elections. With the 1992 election of President Clinton, Mondale was
named ambassador to Japan. His intriguing memoir ends with
his frank assessment of the Bush-Cheney administration and
the first two years of the presidency of Barack Obama. Just
as indispensably, he charts the evolution of Democratic
liberalism from John F. Kennedy to Clinton to Obama while
spelling out the principles required to restore the United
States as a model of progressive government. The Good Fight is replete with Mondale's accounts of the
many American political heavyweights he encountered as
either an ally or as an opponent, including JFK, Johnson,
Humphrey, Nixon, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Reverend
Jesse Jackson, Senator Gary Hart, Reagan, Clinton, and many
others. Eloquent and engaging, The Good Fight illuminates Mondale's
philosophies on opportunity, governmental accountability,
decency in politics, and constitutional democracy, while
chronicling the evolution of a man and the country in which
he is lucky enough to live.
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