When the cheering stops:

...That is hardly the case...

...Inspiring as the Carter story is, and as successful as the Mondale recovery has been, their stories are not likely to hearten this year's ex-candidates just yet...

...Clearly, life after political death...

...Their success encouraged others to join the program until thousands were following their lead...

...This is especially true in Africa where, as he said with a smile, "They're not too used to visits from American presidents, present or past, so I am able to bring the projects to the attention of the highest levels of government and get their help...

...Walter Mondale is right when he says, "The system is such that issues that ought to be central to a campaign-character, honesty, ability, backbone, and energy levels-are examined less and less by the voters...

...I'd wake up at three in the morning, debating...

...Image-making takes precedence over issues and persuasion...

...No one asked them to run, say the cynics...

...Smart, informed, capable, and, at times, eloquent," even "presidential," yet under the guidance of media consultant David Garth, Gore resorted to targeting blocs of voters in what Johnson describes as "the politics of pander...

...I felt like a stone.'' He also described the effect of defeat and the long effort to regain his personal equilibrium...

...They, too, will return to their previous work-as Dole has to the Senate and Gephardt to the House-or they will find new avenues for their energies...

...Who can forget his ravaged face as he left office...

...Most of them have given at least two years of their lives to arduous, slogging fund-raising and campaigning, and time before that to hoping and planning...

...As would-be presidential candidates are forced from the race one by one, the devastation wrought by rejection or failure in support is written on their faces for all to see...

...Finally I got about ten good books and put them right by my bedside...

...In consequence, Ghana, once a country on the edge of famine, is now exporting food to its neighbors...

...And I told the law firm, 'I'll be there when I'll be there, but I'm not ready yet.'" He spent healing time with family and good friends and took long vacations with his wife in the Caribbean and Colorado...

...What are we going to do about it?o do about it...

...I'd have no idea what I was saying...

...He is just now beginning to involve himself in politics again, but, so far at least, only on behalf of others...

...It took months before he could take up his life again, and perhaps the years between '84 and '87 before he fully recovered...

...In a surprisingly frank interview with a Minneapolis newspaperman when he returned to Minnesota this past year to practice law, Mondale described the exhaustion which is the inevitable result of the grueling struggle through primary after primary and, in his case, the final national campaign...

...Former Vice-President Mondale, Democratic standard-bearer in 1984, has flatly described running for the highest political office as ' 'torture...

...But it will take a long time for their wounds to heal...

...Still vivid in our political memories is the picture of a distraught and emotional Edmund Mus-kie standing in a New Hampshire snowstorm to challenge his detractors as his campaign faltered...

...It was tough...

...Some days," he is quoted as saying, "I'd be listening to myself speak...

...Johnson cited the example of Senator Gore-a much better candidate than his New York campaign suggested...

...The candidates' best efforts go into raising the money for the political consultants and media advisers who will market them...

...But the hurt of former candidates might be more bearable if they could feel that our system had given them a chance to be heard and really evaluated by attentive voters...

...It was heartening then to Washingtonians to have him return to this city recently-the first time since 1980-with a tale of hope and accomplishment...

...Marketing is all...

...The examples he gave were heart-lifting evidence that access and goodwill united with skill and knowledge can change the world bit by bit...

...He announced that he would never run for office again...

...A group of sixteen Ghanaian fanners, under the direction of agricultural scientist Frank Borlaug, were persuaded to experiment with improved methods of growing grain-on an acre each...

...He had been actively involved in electoral politics for thirty years and then on one election night he was, in his words, "pushed off a cliff-and clunk...

...He told an audience gathered by Gannett Publications how he has been able to use his status as former president to change lives for the poor and desperate here and abroad through the agency of the Carter Library and Foundation associated with Emory University in Atlanta...

...What Mondale experienced probably pales beside the experience of President Jimmy Carter who attained the presidency only to lose it disastrously after one term...

...We have seen Patricia Schroeder unable to hold back tears, Richard Gephardt fighting them throughout a concession speech (only to succumb in private), Bob Dole unable to conceal his bitterness, Paul Simon, his philosophical, cheerful acceptance belied by his flatness of tone...

...With the help of grants from a European philanthropist, the Carters were able to change the food situation in Ghana...

...That was it...

...As columnist Haynes Johnson has written, the real problem is the sorry state of campaigning in the media age...

...They have only themselves to blame...

...In the same way, working with another group of scientists, a buoyant Carter told his hearers, they are confident that within ten years they will be instrumental in eliminating a parasitical worm which is the principal killer of African children...

...President Carter described his involvement and that of his wife Rosalynn as that of facilitators...