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DAN OLSON: Perhaps only then Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale had an inkling of what Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter intended for the Office of Vice President. When Carter called reporters to Plains, Georgia, Carter said he had two announcements. One, that he'd accept his party's presidential nomination.

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- And the other one is that I've asked to serve as my running mate as the delegates will approve, Senator Walter Mondale.

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DAN OLSON: After the election, Stuart Eizenstat says, Carter and Mondale transformed the Office of Vice President. Eizenstat was Carter's chief domestic policy advisor. He and other former Carter administration staff members recalled that real estate was one of the important changes. For the first time, the Vice President had an office in the West Wing.

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- Four decades after John Nance Garner colorfully described the vice presidency as not worth a warm bucket of spit, a decade after his own political mentor Hubert Humphrey was repeatedly humiliated by President Johnson and his White House staff, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale created a vibrant modern vice presidency, institutionalized it in the executive branch, and developed a model which has been followed and will be followed by every president and vice president since, now down to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

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DAN OLSON: Unlike predecessors, Mondale had access to the president whenever he wanted. He received the same intelligence briefings. Mondale became something new in American government and politics. An advisor to the President, and a Vice President who spoke for the chief executive in his absence. The results of the change included a stunning turnaround on a refugee crisis.

Three years into the Carter administration, Mondale warned European officials and others of a humanitarian disaster in the making as Communist leaders forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

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- It had fast become a crisis of almost Nazi-era proportions. Thousands had died, and many more had been cast in sea in leaky overcrowded boats which often capsized.

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DAN OLSON: The European officials knew Mondale spoke for President Carter. Observers credit the Mondale speech in Geneva as the impetus for opening refugee camps in neighboring Asian nations, and it led to a decision to resettle boat people in this country.

Low points, Mondale says, occurred toward the end of Carter's term in office. At home, the economy was beset by inflation and gas lines. Overseas, the US-backed regime in Iran was overthrown. The Carter administration effort to rescue US hostages in Iran failed as sandstorms disabled the helicopters. Mondale recalls the hostage ordeal ended on the last day of the Carter administration, as the former President and Vice President rode away from the inauguration.

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- While en route, we were called and informed that the Ayatollah Khomeini had released our hostages 10 minutes after Reagan had become president.

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DAN OLSON: It was a small consolation that President Reagan asked Carter and Mondale to be his representatives in Germany to welcome the hostages back to the United States. Successive Presidents have followed to one degree or another the expanded role of the Vice President developed during the Carter administration. In the summer of 1984, in an announcement in the chambers of the Minnesota House, Walter Mondale tried to break the male only hold on the Office of the Vice presidency.

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- And today, I'm delighted to announce that I will ask the Democratic Convention to nominate Geraldine Ferraro of New York to run with me for the White House.

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- The Mondale-Ferraro ticket lost, but Maxine Isaacs, former Mondale deputy press secretary and a Harvard University lecturer, told the audience the decision to nominate a woman for the new more powerful job of Vice President was a strong message.

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- Men and women wept. It seems strange to think about it now, but that was what was happening. They would hold of their daughters to be touched by Ferraro. The Mondale message came through loud and clear. A new day had dawned. A barrier had been broken. America in at least one important way would never be the same again.

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DAN OLSON: Maxine Isaacs, speaking at Macalester College in Saint Paul at the Mondale Lecture Series. Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio.