This debate featured U.S. Senator Walter Mondale from Minnesota, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, and U.S. Senator Bob Dole from Kansas, the Republican vice presidential nominee.
Importance
This was the first vice presidential debate in United States history.
The debate took place on Friday, October 15, 1976 at the Alley Theater in Houston, Texas.
Dole delivered the most remembered line of the debate when he appeared to be blaming the Democratic Party for all of America's wars.
Dole: "I guess, but it's (Watergate and the pardon of Richard Nixon) not a very good issue any more than the war in Vietnam would be or World War II, or World War I, or the war in Korea, all Democrat wars, all in this century. I figured up the other day, if we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it'd be about one point six million Americans - enough to fill the city of Detroit."
Mondale: "I think uh - Senator Dole has richly earned his reputation as a hatchet man tonight, by implying, and stating, that World War II and the Korean War were Democratic wars. Does he really mean to suggest to the American people that there was a partisan difference over our involvement in the war to fight Nazi Germany? I don't think any reasonable American would accept that. Does he really mean to suggest that it was only partisanship that got us into the war in Korea?"