Closing the Domestic Intelligence Gap: Walter Mondale’s Proposal for a National Council of Social Advisers and the Uneasy Partnership between Social Science and the Federal Government

Abstract: This article revisits the rise and fall of Walter Mondale’s legislative proposal to create a national Council of Social Advisers (CSA) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. First, I propose that far from being marginal to Mondale’s career, the CSA proposal emerged from his deep commitment to a robust federal agenda for liberal reform supported by the social sciences, which linked his family upbringing and early involvement with progressive politics to his work as a senator in support of the Great Society both during and after the Johnson presidency. Second, though it ultimately failed, his CSA proposal stands out as the single most ambitious effort in the second half of the twentieth century to elevate the visibility, status, and policy contributions of the social sciences at the highest levels of American government. As a corollary, the story of Mondale’s CSA initiative should be recognized as an important chapter in a much larger narrative about the rise and fall of a liberal reformist agenda that insisted on a key role for the social sciences in service of an activist, well-informed, and socially progressive state.