Former VP Walter "Fritz" Mondale and President Jimmy Carter made an unprecedented dual appearance on Wolfie Blitzer's Saturation Room. Fritz started things off by (replying to a question?) answering whether he's criticizing the Bush MisAdministration. In doing so he unveiled a revolutionary "new" concept of governance. I'm para-phrasing, transcript below...

[cut to Wolf Blitzer]
Blitzer: Blah, blah, blah (I had just switched the channel and didn't focus in for a second or two...)

[cut to Mondale]
Fritz Mondale: "....we told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace."

[cut to Mondale and Carter] picture shows Mondale with "cat ate the canary" expression and Carter resembling a choirboy with an with angelic halo

[three to five seconds of this shot while Wolfie stammered off-camera]

I laughed so hard I nearly busted my gut... (full transcript below the fold)

I'll get the transcript up as soon as it's available...

Update: Here's the CNN transcript of the segment I described -

They dealt with international crises, they pursued peace in the Middle East, they experienced both highs and lows in public opinion. So former President Jimmy Carter and his vice president, Walter Mondale, are both uniquely qualified to talk about the pressures and the perils of the U.S. presidency, this on the 30th anniversary of their taking office.

A short while ago, I spoke with them exclusively and they compared and contrasted their White House with the current one.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER MONDALE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One of the things that I'm proudest of about our four years together was that we told the truth, and we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.

It doesn't sound like much, maybe just what is expected. But I think we're seeing evidence of what happens when you stray from these fundamental principles.

BLITZER: It sounds, Mr. Vice President...

MONDALE: I was never...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: It sounds, Mr. Vice President -- excuse me...

MONDALE: Yes.

BLITZER: ... for interrupting -- that that's an implied criticism, if not a direct criticism, of the current president...

MONDALE: Well...

BLITZER: ... and vice president.

MONDALE: That's -- well, that's acceptable to me, if you want to draw that conclusion.

(LAUGHTER)

MONDALE: But the fact of it is that ours was an honest administration. You could believe what you were told. We never played games with the law.

We were true -- we were true to that oath of office. And we did everything we could to enhance American power, based on our principles, and try to avoid war. And we accomplished that. And I feel good about it.

BLITZER: Is this a dishonest administration?

MONDALE: You know, let me just say this. A lot of the things -- I never use that word. A lot of the things we were told proved not to be true.

BLITZER: But it -- was that a deliberate -- was the president and the vice president -- here is the question, Mr. Vice President. Was the president and the vice president -- did they mislead the American people, or were they misled themselves?

MONDALE: I have been very careful about avoiding words like deceit or lying and so on.

What I'm talking about is our four years, during which I'm absolutely positive we told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace. That's what I'm talking about.

We now have an administration that stumbled over these values, and is having its own great difficulties trying to sustain public leadership, in part because of things they said that got us into this war. They surely have been contemptuous of enforcing the law. And they have been -- they have dumped, basically, the whole foreign intelligence surveillance system. They may be bringing it back.

And it seemed, for a while, they just recklessly wanted to get involved in international military conflicts. And I think it's been at great cost to our country.

BLITZER: Mr. Mondale, about Dick Cheney, you have been critical of him, the relationship he's had with the president. Contrast that to the relationship you had when you were vice president with President Carter.

MONDALE: Carter is credited by all historians, I think, for having established a unique, new relationship with his vice president.

I was brought into the White House. I was privy to the same information. We met repeatedly. I was involved as an adviser and worked for the president in many, many different ways.

And I think future vice presidents have all followed that example, including the Cheney example. But I think one of the problems now is that this vice president, the current vice president, seems to have stepped across the line that we thought was important in our time.

In other words, I tried to work as a representative of the president. I didn't go around volunteering my own policies. I considered myself that kind of officeholder, and not a prime minister, not a deputy president or something like that.

This vice president, see, is troubling to me, because, time and time again, we have seen the establishment, for example, of almost a parallel National Security Council, the involvement of the vice president in trying to pressure, influence the kind of information that flows to the top and up to the presidency.

And I think that political scientists ought to study about whether there should be a recognized line that a vice president must obey to prevent that kind of problem that we're seeing today. Many of the things we have been told that has helped got -- get us in trouble here, I think, is a reflection of that problem.

BLITZER: Mr. President, how far should the Congress go in trying to stop this war in Iraq? Specifically, should it use the so-called power of the purse?

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think that's perfectly legitimate, Wolf, not dealing with our military already over there. We don't want to cut them off, because they haven't been adequately supplied, as you know, with body armor or with armor of their vehicles and other facilities.

But I think the Congress should use its maximum authority. My own recommendation to the Congress, particularly to the Democrats in the Congress, is to adopt, with minor modifications only, the -- the Hamilton-Baker task force recommendations.

I think that's a solid bunch of recommendations on what we ought to do. And it's something that all Democrats could adopt, but with individual candidates for president, and so forth, modifying themselves somewhat slightly.

But I have been very proud, so far, of this first 100 days and the things that the House has done. And my hope is that the Senate, despite the restrictions of -- and a need for getting 60 votes, will follow in the footsteps of the House, and have very strong moves toward the future...

BLITZER: You...

CARTER: ... to correct some of the mistakes that have been made during the last six years.

BLITZER: You meant the first 100 hours, not the first 100 days.

CARTER: First 100 hours. Excuse me.

BLITZER: First 100 legislative hours.

The president is going through a period right now, where he is very unpopular. His policies are unpopular. You went through a similar period during the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis.

What advice do you have for the president right now, as he goes into his final two years in office?

CARTER: Well, obviously, I can't change the character of the president. I don't want to comment on that.

But I -- obviously, what needs to be done is to reassess some of the mistakes that have been made that are patently obvious to everyone, the violation of basic laws, some of which Mondale and I passed -- that is the -- getting judicial approval before you start spying on American people -- there seems to be some acknowledgment, in the last few hours, as a matter of fact, that they violated a law there and the basic elements of the Constitution -- to reassert America's status in the entire world as a champion of human rights, instead of a foremost violator of human rights, both domestically and in our prison camps, or sometimes innocent people, also to pursue the effort to have an energy policy that will correct the mistakes that we have made in recent years, letting the oil companies establish the energy policy.

And I would say that, in many other ways, the tax program that has benefited, almost unanimously, the wealthiest people in the United States, those need to be revised.

So, health programs -- I think the best advice is to reassess the mistakes that have been made, cooperate as much as possible with the Democrats in the Congress. And I think there's a -- not a unanimous, but there is a bipartisan inclination to make some of the corrections that I have described. (END VIDEOTAPE)