Walter Mondale (Caroline Era)

Walter Mondale (born 5th January, 1928) was the 42nd vice-president of the United States and, from 1984, the 42nd president of the US. He served two terms from 1984 to 1992, after his initial victory over President George Bush after the 1983 Presidential Election Campaign. His vice-president, Geraldine Ferraro, was later to become the first female president of the US.

Presidency
Like the British Prime Minister Denis Healey, who was elected at about the same time, President Mondale reversed the monetarist economic policies of his predecessor, in this case George Bush, marking a trans-Atlantic re-emergence of the Post-War consensus. He reduced the budget deficit by raising taxes. In contrast to Bush's sound-bite "Read my lips - no new taxes", Mondale had openly stated that he would indeed raise taxes and was rewarded for his honesty by being elected. He also put a nuclear freeze into practice and tied the US into reducing their nuclear arsenal, by agreement with the Soviet Union doing the same. This led to the development of proxy wars in other parts of the world which are thought to have contributed to the eventual development of the Third World War during his successor's term in 1995. He succeeded in reducing the budget deficit by two-thirds during his first term, as he had undertaken to do.