Al Gore

I

Introduction

Al Gore, born in 1948, vice president of the United States (1993-2001) under President Bill Clinton, the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2000 election, and co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. In one of the closest and most disputed elections in U.S. history, Gore and his running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, were defeated by the Republican ticket of Texas governor George W. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney. Gore actually won the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes out of more than 105 million votes cast nationwide. He lost the electoral vote, however; after five weeks of legal wrangling, Gore failed to overturn election results that gave the state of Florida, with 25 electoral votes, to Bush. Gore was the first presidential candidate since 1888 to win the popular vote and yet lose the electoral vote.

Gore represented Tennessee for eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives (1977-1985) and for another eight in the U.S. Senate (1985-1993). In Congress, he compiled a moderate-to-liberal voting record and a reputation as a fervent environmentalist. Clinton granted Gore unprecedented influence as vice president, giving him leading roles in U.S.-Russian relations, telecommunications policy, reform of the federal bureaucracy, and environmental protection. Gore also stood loyally beside Clinton during the president’s 1998 impeachment, emerging as one of his staunchest defenders. Besides Bush, Gore’s main opponents in the 2000 presidential race were consumer activist Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate, and political commentator Pat Buchanan, who ran on the Reform Party ticket.

II

Early Life and Career

Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., was born in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1948, into a political family. His father, Albert Gore, Sr., spent 32 years in Washington, D.C., as a representative and senator from Tennessee. Pauline Gore, his mother, was an astute political thinker and an important adviser to her husband. Both of Gore’s parents came from poor families in rural Tennessee. During the Great Depression of the 1930s they were ardent supporters of Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal policies. Many of the positions the younger Gore took during his own political career, on issues such as the environment, arms control, and civil rights, were heavily influenced by his liberal parents.

Gore’s childhood was split between Washington, D.C., and rural Tennessee. He spent most of the year attending school in the nation’s capital and spent summers on the family farm near Carthage, Tennessee. Gore had a sister, Nancy.

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Gore attended St. Albans, a private prep school in Washington, D.C., where he played football and basketball and was a leader on the debate team. In 1965 he entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For much of his academic career he was an average student, getting mostly Bs and Cs. His grades improved, however, during his last two years at Harvard.

While Gore attended Harvard, the United States was deeply divided over the Vietnam War (1959-1975). Like his father, Gore was opposed to the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. This opposition led to a difficult decision: whether or not to join the Army and serve in South Vietnam after graduation. By Gore’s senior year, his father was facing a difficult fight for reelection to the Senate because of his opposition to the war and his liberal positions on civil rights issues. Gore knew that if he decided to protest the war by avoiding the draft, it would cause more political trouble for his father. As he later recalled, he was also bothered by the realization that, if he avoided the draft, someone less privileged would be sent in his place. In August 1969, several weeks after he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard, Gore enlisted in the U.S. Army. After basic training at Fort Lee, New Jersey, and a stint at Fort Rucker, Alabama, he served for five months in South Vietnam as a journalist.

On May 19, 1970, while stationed in Alabama, Gore married Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Aitcheson, a woman he had met during high school and had dated throughout college. Their first of four children, Karenna, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1973. A second daughter, Kristin, was born in 1977, Sarah in 1979, and Albert III in 1982.

After Gore was honorably discharged from the Army in 1971, he entered divinity school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. While attending Vanderbilt he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Nashville Tennessean.

III

Political Career

By 1974 Gore was edging closer to a career in politics. While still working at the Tennessean, he enrolled at Vanderbilt Law School. Two years later, the seat that his father had once held in the House of Representatives came open when the incumbent announced his retirement. Gore dropped out of law school and entered the race.

Gore was not favored to win. He had a famous political name but no campaign experience or political organization. His father remained a controversial figure in the state because of his liberal stances. Determined to be seen as his own man, Gore asked his father not to campaign for him publicly. As a candidate, Gore adopted moderate and conservative positions that were more in line with the views of his district’s voters. He opposed certain gun control measures and public funding for abortions. He also called homosexuality “abnormal.” Later in his career, when his positions on these issues had become more liberal, opponents accused him of flip-flopping to gain political advantage. In the August 1976 Democratic primary, the 28-year-old Gore finished first in a nine-candidate field. Because there was virtually no Republican Party organization in the district, the primary victory assured his election to Congress in November 1976.

Gore served four terms in the House of Representatives, from 1977 to 1985. He worked hard to stay in touch with constituents, returning to Tennessee nearly every weekend to hold town meetings. In Washington, D.C., he first made a name for himself on the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee (later renamed Energy and Commerce). In the late 1970s he led numerous hearings on alleged corporate wrongdoing. Gore investigated Gulf Oil Corporation, which had participated in an international cartel to force up uranium prices. He held one of the first hearings on companies that dumped toxic chemical waste, and he was cosponsor of 1980 legislation that created the Superfund, a federal program that requires the cleanup of polluted sites. In 1984 he helped broker a compromise between antismoking advocates and the tobacco industry to strengthen the wording of warning labels on cigarette packages.

Concerned about the possibility of nuclear war with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Gore avidly studied arms control issues. In the early 1980s he proposed a plan to convert multiple-warhead nuclear missiles to single-warhead missiles, dubbed Midgetmen. Theoretically, if both nuclear powers held only these less powerful missiles, it would be less advantageous for one of them to strike first, thereby lessening the chances of a conflict. The Midgetman was never developed, but Gore’s advocacy won him recognition as an arms control expert.

Another retirement helped Gore up the political ladder. In 1983 U.S. senator Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, announced that he would not run for reelection in 1984. Gore had established a statewide reputation as a hard-working public servant, liberal on economic issues but moderate on foreign policy and military affairs. He won easily in November 1984. However, this was also a difficult period for Gore. In May his sister, Nancy Gore Hunger, died of lung cancer at the age of 46.

In the Senate, where Gore served from 1985 to 1993, he continued to work on arms control and environmental issues. In 1987 two Democrats who were expected to run for president the following year—New York governor Mario Cuomo and Arkansas senator Dale Bumpers—decided not to enter the race. Gore’s father and friends encouraged him to run for the Democratic nomination. At the age of 39, he became one of the youngest candidates to seek a presidential nomination in U.S. history. With his family’s Tennessee roots, he counted on doing well in the South. However, Gore won only six states in the Super Tuesday regional primary (when 16 states, most in the South, held primaries on the same day). After finishing a distant third in the New York primary, Gore dropped out of the race and supported the eventual Democratic nominee, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, who went on to lose to George Herbert Walker Bush in the 1988 presidential election.

Following his poor showing in the presidential primaries, Gore refocused his attention on environmental issues and at the same time developed an interest in emerging telecommunication technologies. In 1989 he visited the South Pole to study the impact of global warming and explored the Amazon Basin in South America to investigate the destruction of the rain forest by commercial interests. In 1992 he published Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, a bestselling book that details the environmental problems facing the planet.

Gore had long been interested in telecommunications issues. In 1986 he introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act that eventually led to the investment of billions of dollars in fiber optic research. The development of fiber optics—the transmission of information in the form of light pulsing through thin, flexible glass tubes—allowed efficient, long-distance communication between computers, paving the way for the widespread use of the Internet. He followed up with the National High-Performance Computer Technology Act, signed by President Bush in 1991. The act directed the National Science Foundation to assist colleges, universities, and libraries in connecting to the burgeoning national computer network. Gore later helped popularize the term information superhighway, used to refer to the wide range of information services available through the Internet. Many observers noted the parallels between Gore’s promotion of this new information superhighway and his father’s leading role in creating the U.S. interstate highway system in the 1950s.

IV

Vice President of the United States

In the summer of 1992 Gore accepted Arkansas governor Bill Clinton’s offer to become his vice-presidential running mate in the campaign against Republican president George Bush. Clinton’s selection of Gore was unusual. Presidential candidates traditionally pick someone from a different part of the country to add geographical balance to the ticket. Clinton and Gore, however, were from adjoining Southern states. They were also of the same religion—Southern Baptist—and roughly the same age. Many political observers believe that Clinton’s selection of Gore was intended to address several political liabilities in Clinton’s record. In contrast to Clinton, Gore was experienced in foreign policy and had served in the military. In addition, Gore had a reputation as a devoted family man, while Clinton was alleged to have had an extramarital affair. Together, Clinton and Gore portrayed Bush as out of touch and insensitive to economic hardships created by a recent recession. Clinton and Gore won the election in November 1992 with 43 percent of the vote, defeating Bush, who received 37 percent, and independent candidate Ross Perot, with 19 percent.

As vice president in the Clinton administration, Gore was given broad responsibilities in areas such as the environment, telecommunications, and U.S.-Russian relations. Some of Gore’s early efforts met with disappointment. His proposal for a new tax based on energy consumption, designed to help the environment, died in the Senate. He also argued unsuccessfully for early U.S. intervention in the ethnic warfare that devastated the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

However, Gore had a major impact in other areas. His televised debate with Perot in the fall of 1993 helped swing public and congressional sentiment in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which lifted barriers to trade with Mexico and Canada. Gore spearheaded Clinton’s “Reinventing Government” initiative, which trimmed jobs from the federal payroll and streamlined federal operations in areas such as purchasing and customer service. He also cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate in favor of the Clinton administration’s 1993 economic plan, which began to cut the federal deficit.

By 1994, however, the administration was in trouble. Clinton’s plan to create universal health insurance was criticized as overly expensive and bureaucratic. Republicans took control of the House in 1994 legislative elections, and Clinton’s approval ratings plummeted. Gore helped Clinton fight Republican efforts to pass the so-called “Contract with America,” a legislative program that included several measures designed to reduce the size and power of the federal government. Gore successfully led the administration’s opposition to Republican proposals that would have weakened environmental laws. Clinton and Gore also compromised with the Republicans in many areas, including on a plan to balance the federal budget.

In 1996 Clinton and Gore won renomination as the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees. Riding a booming U.S. economy, the Democrats won the November election with 49 percent of the vote, defeating Republican senator Bob Dole and his vice-presidential running mate, Jack Kemp, who received 41 percent, and the Reform Party ticket of Ross Perot and Pat Choate, with 8 percent. Clinton and Gore became the first Democratic ticket to win consecutive terms in office since Franklin Roosevelt and John Nance Garner in 1932 and 1936.

Just weeks before the election, Gore had begun to come under scrutiny for a number of alleged violations of campaign finance law. While campaigning in April 1996, Gore had attended a luncheon at a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles, California. In October the news media reported that illegal donations had been collected at this luncheon. Gore insisted he was not aware that money was raised at the event. Gore was also criticized for soliciting campaign donations by telephone from his White House office, which, Republicans alleged, violated federal law. The Senate Judiciary Committee recommended that U.S. attorney general Janet Reno appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Gore’s fundraising, but she decided against it. Nonetheless, questions about Gore’s fundraising activities had tarnished his image among some voters.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the vice presidency during Gore’s second term was Clinton’s extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In August 1998 Clinton acknowledged that he had an improper relationship with Lewinsky and said that his earlier statements denying the affair were misleading. Many Gore supporters hoped he would criticize Clinton’s behavior publicly, but Gore proved a loyal vice president, defending and supporting Clinton. Even after the House of Representatives impeached Clinton in December 1998, Gore stood by his side. On the afternoon that the House passed its articles of impeachment, Gore told a rally of House Democrats at the White House that Clinton would be remembered by history as “one of our greatest presidents.” The articles of impeachment were defeated in the Senate.

Gore’s father died in December 1998. In his eulogy, the vice president called Albert Gore, Sr., “the greatest man I ever knew” and credited his father for teaching him a valuable lesson regarding courage, honesty, and political legacy: “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

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