The fall of Mondale

Nicholas von Hoffman

Washington Washington

By 11 o'clock Sunday evening it was certain that Gary Hart had beaten Walter Mondale for the second time in six days, first in the New Hampshire primary and then in the e morning afte Ma the ine second beatin precinct caucuseDavisd. Oder, the

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Etr Washington Post's leading Political writer and a man not given to sweeping statements, wrote: `The disaster that has struck Walter F. Mondale in the Past week is one of the greatest — and least Predicted — implosions of modern US Political — li■ stor fallen with y. Never has a front runner more sickening speed, just six weeks after Mondale awoke to the news that found New York Times/CBS Poll had .winohim holding the most commanding .e.ad ever recorded this early in a presiden- !tat nomination campaign by a non-incum- bent, .i., • A 'he Parachuting of Mr Hart on to the American national consciousness serves to remind us of the amorphous nature of the senator major political parties. Hart, an unknown from Colorado six months ago, was !Peddhe recognised leader of no faction, no ' eal element, no significant group within line mocratic party. In a matter of weeks ehas moved close to taking the party over. the en a Political party has a President in 8,:, "htte House it has unity and cohesion. „.,`" the party out of power, the one not 'cis:MI-oiling the White House, is without sihrection or defined meaning. There is no eh,aduw Cabinet, and the office of national "ocubrianbalyn insoot f such little importance that _Itn..ows that a California banker by the name one person in a thousand of Charles the u Manatt holds down the job for

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chairman has little money to 4,,IsDese; he has no power to nominate ,71_11Yone to run for any office; he is not a ,,eti, her of Congress, nor are the members 'lto 1 his Party who are in Congress beholden e.. hits for their jobs..The national party wujnInittees are primarily staff operations, The stay away from intra-party struggles. eraetY concentrate on servicing all Demo- Dar s While siding with none. The party ap- theatus is expected to be neutral and, lacking Tpower to be anything else, it usually is. an,11,e luckless devil who ran for President tic..".tost the last time out is often called 'the kurut,ar head of the party', but, as the post- ilia___ se career of Jimmy Carter ilia as, there is little difference between be- Insot. titular head and a walking dead man. Gov al- as there is a political party, it is the whoern°rs, Senators and Congress-people To the ruled degree that the emocratic party by a discrete leadership bodY,

Walter Mondale has the members of it in his corner. A galaxy of elected officials, including Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House and the most powerful Democrat holding federal office, are backing Mon- dale. In the Maine debacle Mondale went down to defeat despite having the vocal support of that state's Governor and one of its two United States senators.

The Maine defeat is all the more deva- stating for Mondale because he was shot down not in a primary, which is open to a degree of last-minute voter manipulation through television commercials, but in a caucus. The caucus method consists of hun- dreds of small meetings throughout the state where party members gather to select delegates to represent them. Ordinarily the candidate with the money and organisation to sweep people up and bring them to the caucuses is the candidate who prevails.

Money and organisation are the two things that have been associated with Mon- dale's effort to get the nomination. Cam- paigning in Boston the day after his Maine victory, Hart referred to Mondale as 'the little-known dark horse struggling to get by with $12 million and the AFL-CIO'. But neither the money nor labour unions could win it for him.

In fact, Mondale's strength seems to be eating him. Whatever message he may have for the voters gets lost in the reportage about all that Mondale money or in tele- vision shots of the AFL-CIO meeting in Balmoral Florida, where in expensive if not tasteful surroundings, labour leaders lolled around the swimming pool drinking high- balls and eating crab legs on cracked ice. The penumbra around Mondale almost makes him look like a tacky creature of the boss-dominated machine politics.

But in truth, bosses in the old cigar- chomping tradition are in short supply; the labour unions have not been able to deliver, as they like to. say in politics, a significant vote with any reliability for many years. Mondale, leaning on the labour unions and vacuous bigshot endorsements, gave off a feeling of belonging to an old, used-up form of politics. His manner, that of an American high-school civics teacher, has not helped him either.

Hart has been billing himself as a man of innovation, of fresh thought for the Eighties. Whether he has any new ideas or not, it plays well and it has helped him recruit what his campaign staff refers to as `the Yumpies'. That is short for young, up- wardly mobile professionals, the people who are thought to have galvanised themselves into action when they saw the New Hampshire returns come in and decid- ed Mondale was nothing like a foregone conclusion.

Thus it is now appears likely that for the second time in eight years the Democratic party is about to be captured by what is in effect an outsider candidate, that is a mildly liberal senator of no great clout or distinc- tion, a man who had been until a few days ago on the edge of things. Four years ago, of course, the Republican party was similar- ly captured by a man on its margins. Not everyone thinks that Hart is the man for the Eighties. George McGovern, running not to win but to remind his party of some of its higher values, remarked the other day that 'my friend, Gary, claims to be the candi- date of the future, but as Andy Warhol once said, in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes'.

Will Hart have only the span of a butter- fly before he is replaced by another 15-minute sensation? Will Mondale, who has collected millions upon millions to win this nomination, prove the maxim that you can't argue with money no matter how many Yumpies you get yumpin' along with you?

For the answer, tune in a week hence when we have the result from what they call Super-Tuesday, 13 March, when primaries will be held in five states and caucuses in five others. Not one of the prestigious political journalists, who write more about this election every day than most people have shown any symptoms of wanting to know, hailed the Hart phenomenon in advance.

Nevertheless, now that Hart is on centre stage, it would be surprising if he were to disappear. His greatest silent appeal is not that he is a man of the Eighties, but that a growing number of Democrats believe that he, and not Walter Mondale who does in- deed bear the baggage of the past, is the man with the best chance of beating Ronald Reagan.