again we have to continue to talk about it. with that we do differently? how could we do better? weeknights his life, starting with a 2015 conversation he had with former president jimmy carter. after that, mr. mondale's 1984 democratic national convention acceptance speech when he ran for president against ronald reagan. ♪♪ ♪♪

next, a 2015 conversation between walter and former president, jimmy carter, who served together in the white house from 1977 to 1981. this program was part of a tribute to the former vice president, hosted by the university of minnesota's humphrey school of public affairs. moderating the conversation is richard moe, mr. mondale's former chief of staff. >> i'm humbled tonight by president carter's presence with us, despite his personal health challenges. i was honored to be his vice president and to be with him at the center of most of his central decisions. we succeeded over our years together where many other presidential/vice presidential

teams were shattered. what held us together is a deep, shared common bond, committed to truth and decency. and i never doubted the president's commitment to those values, and i don't doubt it today. we also succeeded because we always lived up to his promise to welcoming into the center of his presidency and to protect the dignity of my presence. he always always kept that promise. we succeeded well for many of the reasons we'll discuss later tonight. we agreed on those issues. so i'm here with you tonight to celebrate the life of this remarkable american. i love the guy, and i know we share -- let's give him a big hand. [ applause ]

>> as an observer of this experience, one of the things that so impressed me has been the personal relationship that has developed and grown over the years between the two of you. mr. vice president, i know you went to atlanta a few weeks ago, and you had dinner with president and mrs. carter. anything about that dinner you care to share with us tonight? >> quite a bit, yeah. [ laughter ] >> the floor is yours. >> i called the president when the news came out, and i watched your remarkable news conference. it was one of the class acts i've ever seen. and i said, you know, mr. president, i can't help you on the health side, but why not don't i come down and we'll spend an evening sharing stories about the good ol days, and

that's it and we had a wonderful, positive evening. we had a chance to retell some old stories and to remind ourselves of what wonderful years they were. >> well, mr. president, is there anything about that that you would like to correct the record? [ laughter ] or add to it? >> i think if we had recorded that evening, it would probably be much more entertaining than it's going to be tonight. [ laughter ] >> oh, well, okay. all right. [ applause ] >> it was the audience, she participated quite well. we talked about joan and so forth. so i would say that the mondale family and the carter family are just about as close as any two families could be. that's been the case since we first got acquainted with each other. we met for the first time extensively when they came down to stay with me in the plains. we had 600 people in town.

and he got along well with the peanut farmers and i figured if anyone could get along that well with peanut farmers. [ laughter ] >> very good. thank you. president carter, you have many significant legacies from your time in the white house. we talked about many of them earlier today. we're going to get into it more this evening. but one of the most important is what the two of you did together to shape this obscure, neglected office of the vice presidency. it has been a remarkable thing to see and we're very pleased that haven't biden is here today. >> absolutely. >> right. [ cheers and applause ] >> and he spoke eloquently this morning about his and president obama's shaping of the office was really strengthened and shaped by your experience.

i can't imagine -- well, let me ask you this. had you thought about the vice presidency beforehand? what was it that you really wanted in a vice president? >> i would say all the way through my political career, i've always said that my favorite president in my lifetime was harry truman. i was in the navy when harry truman basically ordained the end of racial discrimination with an executive order as commander in chief. and i was really shocked to learn later that truman was never informed about the atomic bomb. when i first began to explore possibilities of becoming president, before i knew i was going to win, i found out that until then that the vice president had never been briefed by the department of defense on how to manage the atomic weapon

in case we went to a nuclear war with the soviet union. so that set me back and i began to realize that for all purposes, the vice president was still a part of a legislative branch of government. his main duty was to preside over the senate in case of a near tie and that sort of thing, and i thought the vice president ought to be an executive branch of government. so when prince came down to plains, we had a long talk. he did most of the talking glerksd ideas he wanted to explore about how the vice president could become an integral part of the administration and not separate like it always has been. so i suggested to fritz or he suggested and i accepted, i don't remember, why don't you go talk to vice president humphrey and vice president rockefeller and get ideas about what might be done to bring the vice

president in closer to the president. that was how the whole idea began. and i think that's when he turned to you, if i'm not mistaken. >> well, you pointed him to two vice presidents that had very unhappy experiences in the office. >> i did. >> that was telling. and he did give it a lot of thought. mr. vice president, you said that what president carter gave you was the most generous gift of my president in american history. do you want to expand on that, tell us what you meant? >> i would say the thing that worried me the most was i was going to lose what i knew to be an independent position in the senate and that i might go down that same road that hubert and others went down where they slowly have their dignity taken from them and they are not really involved in a meaningful role in government. and it's kind of pathetic what they went through.

so i did not want to do that and i was not going to do that. when president carter and i talked the first time we went over that quite a bit. and i became convinced -- it was his idea as much as anybody. i became convinced that he was quite aware of this possibility. and he wanted to bring his vice president into the center of his administration, and then we worked out some of these principles like i didn't want to be doing other things. i wanted to be a general adviser to the president. and i wanted to be able to bring to him good news and bad news without going through censors, and he agreed with that. and in order to do that, i needed to have the information that secret and otherwise that allowed me to be a source of support.

and then i was willing -- i wanted to be a troubleshooter as well, and i wanted to find on chores around the country and around the world. and so i think we agreed on it. when we had that talk, we agreed on that. and i was convinced he meant it. and after four years, i'm pursue persuaded that it worked. >> i never served in washington before and fritz waunz expert, at least from his help from hubert humphrey and others about what was going on in washington. that was the main thing. >> right. >> so we began, really, to explore every possibility of

moving the vice president close to the president. he never had been in the white house before. and i spent one weekend with hubert humphrey because i found out just before he died and while he had serious cancer that he had never been permitted to go to camp david. >> that's right. >> and so i invited him to go. i had a speech to make on the west coast, and i came back and picked him up in minneapolis. we went and spent the weekend at camp david just me and him and his medical doctor, as a matter of fact. and he unburdened to me that weekend things that i'm sure he never had said publicly and never has since then, and that was the deprivation he experienced as vice president and the exclusion from many a role of an authoritative nature,

an executive nature. and he was deprived of taking news reporters overseas with him and he had to get all the press releases approved by the president before it could be issues. and he was never involved in any serious discussions that lyndon johnson had with any foreign leader. and he was restricted severely on his ability to go into the congress and able to start an original conversation with another member of the u.s. senate. things of that kind it was very embarrassing to him as a human being and counterproductive. so i decided then that i had done the right thing with fritz because all those things were changed when fritz became vice president. >> thanks to you and thanks to that conversation, yes. [ applause ] >> thank you. ?

he was a mentor to mondale and many of us from minnesota, and to you. and he suffered in the vice presidency. even though he did, vice president mondale, he urged you to be open to the idea. you want to talk about that? >> i went, at your suggestion, i went to see hubert and i said, you know, i think i got a possibility of joining with mr. carter and refund for vice president. but in light of the experience you had in this office and the kind of painfulness and humiliation of it all, what do you recommend? and he said, i recommend you take it if you can get it. he said it's wonderful, you'll learn more than any other way. you'll have more influence one day than you'll have all year in the senate. and he said i hope you'll

consider doing that. now, i must say i was never sure whether he wanted me to be vice president or he wanted me to be minnesota's senior senator. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> well, he gave you the right advice and you did the right thing. >> yes, right. >> what did it mean to you to have the office in the west wing that president carter gave you. no other previous vice president has been in the west wing. >> i think that was your idea. that meant everything because if you're over in the eob where most of the vice presidents had been, where hubert was, i used to say it was like being in baltimore. [ laughter ] >> some of us spent a lot of time in baltimore. >> i know. it was good for you. [ laughter ]

and i said -- i was there for a while and i said nothing pro-pinks like pro-pinkuity. i was in this office five seconds from your office. all the key presidential aides were right there. we'd bump into each other and talk all the time. and i think at the very center of the white house is that very small west wing. if you're there i think you're part of a serious effort. if you're outside of there, i don't know. it was a big advantage to me and i think it helped me serve. >> you mr. president, the other thing that you did besides coming up with the west wing idea, i know this because i heard you say it, you told your staff and your cabinet, i want you to respond to a request from

the vice president as if it came from me. >> exactly. >> and you said because you knew the experience of vice presidents rockefeller and humphrey, if any of you are messing with this guy, you're out of here, and that was the right thing to do. that message came through loud and clear. thank you for that. >> well, that was very important because in the past, quite often the chief of staff or someone like that saw the vice president as a challenger to them and their own authority and their own influence. and i knew that could happen with my staff as well. so it was clear to me that everybody that worked in the white house should look upon me as an ultimate voice, but along with me, fritz mondale. and i also knew that you were the chief of staff for fritz mondale, and i wanted you to feel that you also worked for me and not just him. >> and i did. >> you did, that's right. [ laughter ] >> you and made sure of that. >> that's right. so when hamilton and jodi power got an order from fritz or a

suggestion from fritz, they knew it was the same as coming from me. >> that's right. >> and i note that we haven't had any unpleasant disagreement as a result of that. >> made a huge difference, i can tell you. >> you know, before, senator humphrey had been forbidden to take an initiative in going to even a member of congress and talking to them about executive affairs. >> right. >> but i changed that as well. so i never had a meeting with any foreign leader from which fritz mondale was excluded. >> right. >> and i never had a meeting with a member of congress from which he was excluded. one of the things that i was concerned about was the disharmony that existed then and now among the members of the national security staff because we had the vice president and the secretary of state and the secretary of defense, the national security adviser, sometimes the head of the intelligence agencies, we met

every friday morning to discuss every possible issue that might coming up the following week in foreign affairs. dr. brzezinski took notes and he would meet wednesday morning with the secretary of defense and the secretary of state to make sure they were doing what we had decided. >> right. >> and fritz mondale was always an integral part of that meeting that shaped the foreign policy. so so far as i know, he was almost like another president. that's what i wanted. >> he thought that sometimes. >> i know he did. [ laughter ] there was one thing that fritz did, though, that i think exceeded his authority. [ laughter ] whenever there was a chance for me to go to norway a country that i really admired -- [ laughter ] -- i was always excluded from consideration. [ laughter ]

and the first thing i knew, fritz would be all the way back, mr. president, i've just returned from norway. i said, well, i was planning to go to norway myself. [ laughter ] but he would give me a thorough report of what was going on in that wonderful country. >> you'll be pleased to know that the foreign minister of norway and the ambassador are here this evening and they can arrange the trip. [ applause ] >> could you please stand? >> foreign ministry brende? there we are. ambassador. [ applause ] >> if you ask anybody from those ancient days back in the '70s, so forth, they didn't know that i was president. [ laughter ] >> really? >> yeah. >> this is a tough evening. >> yeah. >> i can do that to you. >> i know.

>> we're going to shift gears here a little bit, mr. president. i think he would welcome that. [ laughter ] in the introduction to your marvelous new book, "a full life," let me just give that a plug. you should all read "a full life" by jimmy carter. this is an extraordinary book. [ applause ] you quote in the introduction vice president mondale's fairly owen summary of your four years in office. we told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace. and you added in the introduction we promoted human rights. thank you for promoting that. [ applause ] we all remember how you embraced human rights so firmly and

consistently. we became known in parts of the world in ways that we hadn't before because of that. that's still true in many parts of the world. what was the motivation that made you make human rights such a priority? if you would, please, what do you see as the largest human rights issue in the world today? >> well, to go back when i was a child, i grew up in a community where my family was the only white family there. so i grew up in a group of about 215 african-americans. so my whole life was shaped by the african-american culture. as i get older and older, i realized there was a great deal of discrimination there. they couldn't vote, they couldn't serve in a jury. my mother paid no attention to that racial segregation or discrimination. so i've always been a champion of human rights in a small,

limited way. when i got to be president, of course, i put it as one of my goals as president. and i saw soon that this resonated in russia with the jewish russians who wanted to come out, and also just one quick example in latin america. when i became president, almost every country in south america was a military dictatorship. colombia, peru, chile, argentina, paraguay, uruguay, brazil, and so forth. the human rights there and our support for it, the condemnation of oppression made it possible for every country in south america to now become a democracy and they did it within five years after i left office. i think the practical results very much pleased me while i was president, although it was still looked upon by some as a weakness instead of a strength.

and i think to answer your question, i think the worst worldwide human rights oppression is against women and girls. there's come out about that, including in our country. we don't have some of the problems, but we have now more slavery than ever existed in the 18th and 19th century in the world. atlanta happens to be the number one trading post in america for slavery. >> really? >> we have more than 200 people every month sold into slavery in atlanta. and the reason for this is that it has the largest and most busy airport on earth, and a lot of the passengers coming in to atlanta on delta. girls with brown and black skin. "the new york times" did a very long article last february or

march that said black or brown-skinned girls in atlanta could be bought by a brothel owner for $1,000. and so this is female slavery comprises about 80% of the total. and a lot of the girls are sold into sexual slavery. anyway, the same thing happens in our universities now with oppression, sexual abuse of girls, and also in our military. last year 16,000 cases of sexual abuse took place in the military. and very seldom is a person prosecuted or punished for rape even in the military or university system. so we have a long way to go not only in this country but around the world. >> thank you for your leadership. [ applause ] vice president mondale, you were very much a partner in this effort to promote human rights

in the backy case, in meeting with the south african lip on apartheid in trying to save the vietnamese boat people who were dying at sea. do you want to talk about any of those issues or others? >> these were all issues that you were directly uninvolved in. we talked about them. and i would pick up various of them and particularly required travel and the rest, organization and trying to add my help to that. boat people, horrible scandal, particularly in southeast asia. we thought clear evidence that the government of south vietnamese was pushing, particularly citizens of chinese

extraction, out to sea, sometimes charging them for the honor of being kicked out. they were often getting into boats that were unseaworthy. thousands lost their lives at sea. and the u.n. was saying this was just poverty. there wasn't any of that. so we decided we needed to make an issue out of this. the navy didn't want to pick up -- remember we talked about that? the navy was hanging back again, as it always does. [ laughter ] and we -- so the navy agreed to pick up people, saved a lot of lives, and we set up a u.n. conference in geneva on the boat

people. and we were able to get a strong resolution there and we set up an international system. we took most of them, but some 20 or 30 nations also participated in a meaningful way, and i think the whole world felt better about it. and i think the united states looked pretty good at that time. and i'd like to see us get involved now a little more fully. [ applause ] >> after the vietnam war, the refugees from vietnam and cambodia were being persecuted and assassinated if they found they were loyal to us during the war. so we began to receive these people after they were carefully screened. just a lesson for europe, we were taking about 12,000 a month. we took them and the vietnamese and cambodians have made very good citizens for the united states all over.

>> absolutely. [ applause ] >> president carter, one of the most difficult, and, i think, frustrating experiences in your tenure was when the iran seized the hostages from the american embassy in tehran. the release was the work of your administration. now president obama has secured an agreement with iran to prevent the development of a nuclear weapon for at least a decade. how do you view that agreement in terms of what it means for peace in the middle east and what it might mean for the future of iran itself internally? >> what many people don't even realize unless they think about it a few minutes was that when the shah was overthrown and the i don't let khomeini blishld a

-- established a new government, we established relationship with a new government. that was a government that i credited the hostages were taken. so i believe then and now that we should deal with the countries with whom we disagree and not just build a barrier between us that exacerbates the situation over years. so i've been long awaiting the time when the united states would have at least talks with iran. and i think that what john curry did -- i met with him to discuss this this afternoon among other things and what president obama did was the right thing. and i hope and pray that the peace agreement that we worked out with iran about nuclear weapons will prevail and they will honor their commitments. so i think it's a wonderful thing and i hope that the whole country will get behind it and support it and the iranians will comply. [ applause ] >> do you want to add anything to that, mr. vice president?

>> no, i agree with that. i think it looks to me like the president is gaining a majority of support in the united states, and the momentum is flowing to him because he's providing excellent and needed leadership. [ applause ] >> mr. president, you were known to a lot of us in the white house for taking on a lot of tough issues. no tough issue was safe if it came near your desk, we thought. [ laughter ] and your achievements have not always been fully recognize, but just to look back on it, you brought peace to the middle east at camp david. yes, indeed. [ applause ] you put the country on the path towards energy independence. [ applause ] you brought inflation under

control and it's remained under control for 30 plus years. [ applause ] you appointed volker, i remember that very well. and then came panama, which was one of the toughest issues any president -- five of your predecessors had failed to solve that problem of the panama canal, but you took it on. by all accounts, the canal today is a huge success in terms of our security, economically, in every possible way. do you have any flexes on that -- reflections on that? >> even more difficult than being elected president. >> wow. >> and i think it was the most courageous decision ever been made by the u.s. congress in history. for instance, there were 20 senators who voted for the canal treaties in 1978 who were up for

re-election that year. only seven of them came back follow january, 7 out of 20. and the rate was almost as great two years later in 1980, including a president who was not re-elected. [ laughter ] and i think this has been one of the best examples on the sincerity and competent of the united states in supporting human rights of a tangible nature that i can remember, because to give away the canal to use reagan's expression, was a crime almost against the united states. but in my opinion it was the right thing to do. you may remember that reagan almost overthrew gerald ford as a republican nominee in 1976, and a lot of the issue was on reagan's condemnation of any move toward panama canal treaties. but i had bipartisan support and we laboriously dealt with the

undecided senators, about 11 of them, and finally got enough to get the thing passed. so it was good. it's still considered to be an unpopular deal. when the year 2000 came and time for us to turn over the canal to the panamanians, the president decided not to go down there. and the vice president decided not to go down there. and the secretary of state decided not to go down there. for the first time, they asked me to go down there. [ laughter ] >> sounds like a job for a vice president to me. >> the vice president didn't want to go. later when they decided to expand is canal by doubling its capacity, there was a big ceremony down there, and the incumbent vice president asked me to go and represent the united states. so i've been honored twice since i left the white house because -- >> congratulations.

>> thank you. >> vice president mondale? >> i told the story today at an earlier conference about how we were trying to get those hard-line senators who had campaigned against the treaty. senator hiyakawa, who ran against -- it's ours, we stole it fair and square and so on. [ laughter ] and he told me, you know, he said maybe i could support the treaty, but he said the president is not very well advised. he doesn't have good advice, and maybe if he would take my advice, i could vote for it. so i ran for the phone and called you. and we got him on the phone right away and we went over the information. and he said, yes, i think i can vote for it. shouldn't we meet biweekly or something? and you said let's not do that. we probably need to meet more

often. [ laughter ] he was the deciding vote, wasn't he? >> any of them could have been the deciding vote. >> but you spent a lot of time up there working on the ratification. as you would put it, that was grinding hard rock, wasn't it? >> right. and it was -- your point of the number of senators who were going to lose the next election, many of them whom knew that. i remember tom mcentire of new hampshire said, yes, i'll vote for it. this is right, but he said don't expect me back in the next session. it was not popular. it was a strange issue for me. usually it's a senator wanting to do something that's safe and

not right. [ laughter ] in this case, they knew to vote against it was wrong. and so even though it affected their own future, she they voted right. and it was an inspiring time to be up there. >> wow. president carter, you, rosalyn, and your team have done on extraordinary job for 35 years. exactly. [ applause ] you set the gold standard for former presidents. there's no question about that. i'd be grateful -- i know the audience would, if they could hear you talk about the kinds of issues the center is doing, what your hopes and aspirations are. they can't say carter center all about? >> three things. one is peace. another one is democracy and freedom. and the third one is the

alleviation of suffering. the carter center is free to go meet with leaders around the world with whom the united states won't relate, kind of outcast people. for instance, in khartoum where the president's been indicted. and nepal where the maoists were condemned as terrorists. north korea, i've been there several times to work out deals with the government when i could. we met with fata and hamas. quite often the outcast is quite often the one who's causing an unnecessary war or is causing a problem with human rights. so we go right to them and try to change that policy. i never do go into a troubled

area without getting ahead of time permission from the white house. sometimes reluctant permission, but i always get percentage. i always make a report to the white house and the state department. anyway, that's one thing. the second thing is the policy of monitoring elections because we found out in trying to negotiate peace between two groups, quite often if we ask why don't we have an honest election, both antagonists know they're going to be the leader, that's the principle of politics, your self-delusion. [ laughter ] so we began to monitor elections. so we just finished -- we just finished our 100th troubled election in gaian nah, and now we're working on myanmar. two-thirds of our total budget each year is devoted who w.h.o.

calls next to the tropical diseases. we'll treat this year about 71 million people so they won't go blind or die from disease that is no longer known in the developed world. so health care is our primary way to expend money. one example is -- some of you may have heard. we started out with 20 countries that had guinea worm, and 26,300 villagers. at this point we have 15 cases in the world. [ applause ] but there we go into a country and work side by side with the people in little villages and it gives us an insight quite often into political affairs in that country. that's what we share with our leaders in washington. >> right. it's extraordinary work.

one of the things in addition to that that i so admire is you planned ahead. you've endowed the work of the center. your grandson, jason, is going to be the chairman. didn't want to rush it. he's going to be the chairman. but you're planning for this work together on forever. >> we appointed half of the board members they appoint half. so we have a great institution backing us up and we have organizations around the world with leaders. we have about 30 leaders in latin america who've been a president or prime minister, and they work in partnership with us. and so we have a recovered holding good elections and we have an adequate endowment to tide us over when we're not there to raise money. we have to raise a lot of money. >> you and i were chatting earlier before we started. you're going to hold the annual meeting of the carter center weekend in annapolis next year.

and you said i could invite everybody here to attend, right? you and the vice president will be there. it's going to be a great event. we were going to have some questions, but we don't have any microphones. [ laughter ] just a little issue there. so i think what we should probably do is to wrap this up. but mr. president, i would like to you ask you, invite you to say any final words about the vice president or about anything you would like at this point. >> well, i think what fritz and i did together was historic. it has changed the basic structure of the executive branch of government to bring the vice president in as a full partner with a president. that had never been done before. and i think that the reason it was successful was every expectation i had for that partnership was never betrayed by fritz mondale. he was a perfect partner, and i

don't think we ever had a serious argument during the four years, which was better than relationship between me and my wife. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> okay? >> mr. vice president, this is your day and you get the last word. >> well, we're just so thrilled to have the president with us. i know this was a great evening for all of us. you can feel it. the accomplishments of the carter administration, carter/mondale administration, really are an inspiration. we're thrilled that you're here. i'm glad to be a part of it. we love you. thank you very much. >> thank you. [ applause ]

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