They're saying Walter Mondale will inherit Paul Wellstone's space on the ballot in Minnesota. This is interesting to me because politics has gotten so nasty since Mondale's last "at bat" and he always struck me as a man who ran clean campaigns that were built on issues and free of mud…in other words, everything we say we want in politics but don't respect when we get it. If you don't slam the other guy, you lose. And when you lose in politics, you don't even get the reward of anyone saying, "Well, he ran an honest campaign." More often, they call you an utter failure and accuse you of weakness.
In fact, it seemed to me that Mondale's defeat in '84 institutionalized the notion that you have to go after your opponent, or at least make him or her think you're ready to do so. I seem to recall hearing some gent who managed political campaigns say once that, every time a candidate says, "I don't want to go negative. I want to run a clean campaign," a handler has to say to him, "You want to wind up like Walter Mondale?" I also recall some post-'84 interview in which Mondale said he probably wouldn't seek public office again because he didn't want to run the kind of campaign that it often takes to win.
I have no idea what kind of senator he'd be in this day and age. But I like the idea of a man who ran a dignified campaign having the chance to bypass most of the pernicious, demeaning process of getting elected. If anyone deserves that kind of short cut, it's Walter Mondale.