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.