Iowa Caucus History: Walter Mondale Battles Expectations in 1984

Ahead of the 1984 Iowa caucuses, Vice President Walter Mondale was the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic party's nomination. A Midwestern upbringing on the Iowa-Minnesota border only bolstered his caucus expectations. Expectations were so high for Mondale that the media's attention was focused on who would come in second. Colorado Senator Gary Hart exceeded the low expectations for his candidacy, and received a significant boost in popularity from his strong Iowa showing.

Former Vice President of the United States.

(applause)

Ahead of the 1984 Iowa caucuses, former Minnesota Senator, Vice President Walter Mondale was the overwhelming favorite for his party's nomination. A Midwestern upbringing on the Iowa-Minnesota border only bolstered his caucus expectations.

Yepsen: Mondale's people were sort of in the same position Muskie was in '72. The front-runner, the head, got all of the party poohbah’s and yet they were really vulnerable.

If Mondale was to be the 1980s version of Muskie, what better man to pick up the 1972 playbook than former McGovern campaign manager, now Senator, Gary Hart?

Hart: There was never a time when I thought I would miraculously win the Iowa caucuses. What I was out to do was to use the cliché of political journalism, do better than expected. And expectations in my case were so low that I didn't have to do very much.

Mondale: As a candidate I was always trying to knock down expectations. I don't know how well I'll do. 49% is way too high. But the press kept building it up.

How do you go about setting those expectations? And is that fair?

Tom Brokaw: It's an imperfect process, there's no question about that, but I think that a kind of consensus is arrived at Walter Mondale is saying publicly, I'll take any victory at all, I just want to do well there. If I win by two votes that's a big victory. But the fact of the matter is a lot of people are saying that Walter Mondale will have to finish with about 45% of the vote.

Mondale: I know the American people and I am ready, I am ready to be President of the United States.

Mondale for President.

Heavy expectations were weighing on Mondale's Iowa campaign. In fall of 1983 when political consultant Joe Trippi was drafted from the East Coast to take over Iowa operations, he found the side effects of perceived inevitability.

Joe Trippi: It was a disaster. He had been falling in the polls. The organization people who had supported, Iowans who supported him had been calling the national headquarters saying, something is wrong. It's just not, the organization isn't coming together. Almost this feeling of we couldn't lose therefore people, there was no urgency.

Hart: Voters want to know that you want and need their help and if you are kind of assuming the presidency they don't get that sense. An equally formidable candidate in that field that people have forgotten about, one of the most popular Americans, John Glenn. So I not only had to compete with Walter Mondale, I had to compete with America's astronaut.

Polls currently put John Glenn second in the democratic presidential race. With less than two weeks left before the Iowa caucus, he needs additional support. On this trip he targets the farmer with the aid of the media.

Glenn: Many of you have had a pretty tough time over the last few years.

This trip was carefully scripted out moment by moment to achieve the desired effect.

If you want to show that John Glenn is talking and listening and interested in what farmers have to say, then you take them and you walk them around the fields and have him feed the pigs and talk to farmers in the barn.

And if you've ever wondered why presidential candidates sit on bales of hay and ride tractors while in Iowa, it's because it's in the script. And when you talk to farmers, the script says, make the farmer look like a farmer.

I'm a neighbor and I was just asked to come and come in your coveralls.

Mondale: And I've got to say John Glenn is still an old friend of mine. I thought that he came across flat in Iowa. He didn't really get organized there, took a low voltage view of what he should do well in Iowa and it didn't work at all. As a matter of fact, he slipped.

John Glenn was the candidate to challenge Walter Mondale, but instead his victory hopes deflates, he finished a dismal fifth.

Hart: When you end up in the Motel 6 in Des Moines at midnight you scratch your head and you say, well what am I doing here? I'm a small town farm kid from Kansas. What am I doing here?

Mondale: A lot of the media I think is disconnected from the communities. The big national firms that think they know what Iowans want, they may not know a damn thing about what Iowans want. So the one thing about Iowa, their system guarantees that you listen to what they've got to say.

We're going to move this caucus along because the media and everybody has their eyes on Des Moines and they want this thing over by the time of the ten o'clock news.

The next President of the United States Walter Fritz Mondale.

Mondale: Tonight is the beginning of the end of the Reagan administration.

Mondale: The press wants to get high expectations so you don't quite make it and then they've got a story about how you didn't quite do it even though you won. So that's the game that goes on. It's not very edifying in my opinion, but that's what happens.

Fritz Mondale, he can be inevitable, he can be all these things, we could win with 51, we could win with 48. Does it matter? In the end, great, we all knew you were the front-runner. The real question we want to know is who is the other guy? And the other guy turns out to be Gary Hart. And once everybody knows that, that's the most amazing thing that comes out of Iowa is the other guy a lot of times, not the front-runner.

Mondale: But he got a little lift out it and handled it very cleverly.