Free Republic

ST. PAUL - Walter Mondale, the man who transformed the vice presidency from a ceremonial job to a position of power, thinks Vice President Dick Cheney wields too much power and may be undermining the president. But Mondale is growing increasingly impressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and believes she is steering the Bush administration toward more cooperative relations with other countries. Mondale, 77, a former Minnesota attorney general and U.S. senator, was vice president under President Carter from 1977 through 1980. He was the first vice president to have an office in the White House, have access to...

George W. Bush seems to have driven his political opponents nuts. Howard Dean's reference to the "most interesting theory" that President Bush might have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack on the United States suggests that Dean has gone around the bend. But Dean is in good company with many of his fellow Democrats. Former Vice President and Democratic elder statesman Walter Mondale has joined the crowd, although he distinguished himself with spectacularly bad timing. Mondale presided over a program devoted to discussion of the Bush administration's foreign policy at Macalester College on Dec. 12, the day before American forces...