Welcome to the Al Franken podcast, and we got a great one today for a change.

Walter Mondale, Vice President Walter Mondale is my guest here, and we're recording in his office.

He works at a law firm here in Minneapolis.

And so we're doing that.

So you may hear interruptions.

He is just beloved here in Minnesota.

And for a reason, he is 91 years old now

and has served this state,

he served this state for a really long time and this country.

He was in the Senate at a time when it was working better than it does now.

Let's just put it that way.

A lot of it, I think, has to do with what happened during the period that he was there,

and specifically the civil rights bill.

Before the civil rights bill, we had a Democratic Party that was liberal and progressive and conservative.

And the Republican Party was conservative.

And then it had these northeastern Republicans who were liberal and progressive.

So what happened to get anything done,

you had to work across party lines.

And that doesn't happen now.

And that is a shame.

So when Fritz Mondale was there, he got stuff done he got a equal housing bill done

civil rights bill and of course uh vice president of the United States he really created

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