[...] It all could come down to Mondale. How likely is his victory? It's not a sure thing. Yes, he beat Ronald Reagan in Minnesota, but he won by fewer than 4,000 votes. This time his opponent -- a breezy ex-lib named Norm Coleman -- need only remind the voters of Mondale's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in 1984. When it came to taking money from your pocket, Mondale was clear: His hand almost trembled with anticipation. Recall the famous promise from the '84 speech: "It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

This was intended as an applause line.

As for foreign policy, Mondale promised to stop helping the Contras in El Salvador in his first hundred days, which could have handed the country over to communism for the foreseeable future.

He decried Reagan's indifference toward arms control by lurching into hysteria: "Why has this administration failed? Why haven't they tried? Why can't they understand the cry of Americans and human beings for sense and sanity in control of these godawful weapons? Why, why?"

Perhaps because Reagan had decided to defeat the nation that pointed the nukes at America, instead of spending all his time on a treaty that would confine their warheads to 10,000. President Mondale would not have insisted that Mr. Gorbachev "tear down this wall." He would have implored the Soviet leader to enter into sincere, bilateral discussions that would make the wall 17 percent thinner. [...]