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Mondale acknowledges crowd's approval, then lays low
David Peterson
Star Tribune

Published Oct. 30, 2002 MOND30

A crowd that had been sitting and waiting for hours came alive Tuesday night at Williams Arena when Bill Clinton came into view at the head of a long procession of national political figures. It burst into applause again for Ted Kennedy, for John Glenn, for several other famous faces.

But when Walter Mondale appeared, the response was explosive. This time not only hands but feet were at work, stomping a deep bass across the "Barn." Mondale smiled.

And then . . .

He disappeared.

He wasn't on the dais. He was tucked away in a corner of the building. He wasn't surrounded by cameras, and he wasn't greeting crowds. The man whose 1978 eulogy for Hubert Humphrey was one of the memorable moments in Minnesota politics, never came to the microphone.

From time to time a television camera would zoom in on him as he listened, reminding the crowd, which watched huge video screens suspended from the ceiling, that he was still there. But for all that, he was just a suit in the crowd, a distant face in a sea of Washington faces, far more so than a viewer from home could probably grasp. And that was intended, said those involved in planning the memorial service.

"If Fritz were not going to run," said a campaign operative who asked not to be named, "he would have been asked to speak and he would have accepted. But under these circumstances, we knew that the moment he spoke the focus would shift away from Paul and Sheila and the others. Everyone immediately reached the same conclusion, that it wouldn't be right. This is not a political event."

That notion was debatable from the start of the event, and grew downright wrong as the evening went along. More than a memorial service, it felt like a campaign rally, with many lines designed for applause. Some of the most intense responses came in response to calls to win the election campaign that Wellstone had been waging against Republican Norm Coleman when his plane crashed Friday.

At the end of a video tribute, for example, Wellstone's statement, "I intend to win this Senate race," was greeted by a standing ovation. A later speaker, Rick Kahn, implored the crowd so insistently and so often to "win this election for Paul Wellstone," that moderator George Latimer, the former St. Paul mayor, teased him for it.

Mondale, however, was merely a spectator, and that was an excellent idea, said University of Minnesota historian Hy Berman.

"Particularly in light of all the controversy Sunday and Monday over premature campaigning," he said, "I would certainly understand a decision to make Mondale's presence at the memorial service low-key. I assume that's the major reason and maybe even the only one. Republicans nationally and talk-show hosts are saying the very fact his name is mentioned is campaigning, so there's reason to be cautious."

Under these delicate circumstances, Berman said, it is easy to alienate the voters by making a false step.

National Republicans must be cautious about being seen to step into the fray, he said, "or it'll boomerang in big way, so much so that it could even elect Roger Moe, not to mention Walter Mondale," he said. "This is quite a different political setting than New York or even California."

But the Democrats must step carefully too, he said. "We have a long history of experience with these kinds of tragedies in election campaigns, and it has always worked to disadvantage of that party which seeks to take advantage."

-- David Peterson is atdapeterson@startribune.com.