Mondale Privately Opposed Carter, Book Says

Walter F. Mondale, although a scrupulously loyal vice president in public, vehemently opposed many of President Carter’s policies and feared his agenda and “inept” political approach would destroy both of them politically, a onetime senior Carter aide declares in a new biography of the former president.

Mondale, a former senator from Minnesota, felt strongly that the much more conservative Carter was shortchanging social programs while providing excessive funds for defense, writes Peter Bourne, a psychiatrist who served as Carter’s top advisor on health and drug abuse for 18 months.

Bourne resigned his post over a controversy involving a prescription he wrote for a member of his staff. But he remained close friends with Carter and had access to his presidential diaries in writing, “Jimmy Carter/A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to Post Presidency.”

Mondale “fought ferociously” in private to preserve spending on social programs and complained that Carter was “hurting the poor, raising defense to the roof, dropping SALT [Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty], alienating the Jews and even moderate liberals,” Bourne said.

In his book, Bourne also wrote that:

* Before naming Paul A. Volcker to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Carter telephoned A.W. (Tom) Clausen, president of the Bank of America, to ask him to consider the post. Clausen said he would speak to his wife about it and put the president on hold. He came back on the line to say that his wife did not want to move to Washington.

* Carter received a letter from Dr. Benjamin Mays, former president of Morehouse College, saying that he and three other black leaders had met with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to try to dissuade him from running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980 because it would split black loyalties.

Carter, who went on to defeat Kennedy for the nomination, responded to Mays: “Thanks for the effort. There are no philosophical differences between me and the senator. He’s just an impatiently ambitious man.”

Bourne wrote that in 1979, the third year of the Carter presidency, when Carter’s public approval rating had plummeted to 26%, Mondale thought political advisor Pat Cadell’s proposal for the president to address the nation about what he saw as a crisis of confidence in the American people was “stupid.” Mondale became so vehement in his opposition that Carter worried about his emotional state, according to Bourne. Bourne said Mondale later wrote: “Everything in me told me that this was wrong. I was morose about it because I thought it would destroy Carter and me with him.”

Carter invited Mondale to discuss the issue at length, and the vice president told him the speech would be political suicide for them.

Later, Carter wrote of Mondale: “I grew quite concerned about him. He was distraught and could not be reconciled.”

Mondale recently retired as ambassador to Japan and now practices law in Minneapolis, In a telephone interview with The Times, he acknowledged that he had “made a little speech” to Carter and walked around Camp David with him discussing their differences. But he said, “We had a unique relationship and I was loyal to the president and we both knew we were going through some tough times.”

Carter eventually delivered the address, which became known as the “malaise” speech, although Carter never used that term. Mondale now says that because of his advice, some of Cadell’s points were dropped from the speech, and that the vice president then tempered his opposition. After the speech, Carter’s approval rating shot up 11 points to 36%.

But Carter followed up by calling for the resignation of his entire Cabinet and senior White House staff as a signal of getting the administration off to a fresh start. As Bourne wrote, that move, coupled with the “malaise speech,” ineptly created the impression of a governmental crisis and a blizzard of media stories.

Carter later said it had been a mistake.

Bourne wrote that at one point, Mondale agonized so much over Cadell’s advice that he considered resigning or at least announcing at the 1980 Democratic convention that he would not be on the Democratic ticket as Carter’s running mate. And he wrote that Mondale’s wife, Joan, advised him, “It’ll be better if you quit.” But Mondale later told his staff, “I am ready to begin again.”

Mondale, in the interview, denied he ever considered resigning or not running with Carter in 1980. “I never would do that, that’s not the way I worked, anybody who worked with me knows that’s not accurate,” he said.