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Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician and who served as the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He ran for President in 2000 following Bill Clinton's two four-year terms, and was defeated by the Republican candidate George W. Bush in a close election whose outcome remained uncertain for over a month pending legal arguments over vote-counting procedures in Florida.
Early and personal life
Born the son of Albert Gore, Sr, a veteran Democratic Senator from Tennessee and grandson of Thomas and Pauline Gore, Al Gore Jr. divided his childhood between Washington, D.C (where his father worked) and Carthage, Tennessee. During the school year, Gore Jr. lived in a hotel in Washington, where he attended the elite St. Albans School; during summer vacations, he lived in Carthage, where he worked on the Gore family farm.
In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, where he majored in government. His roommate was actor Tommy Lee Jones. He graduated from Harvard in June of 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
In 1970, Gore married Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson (Tipper Gore). The couple first met many years before at a dance held when both were in high school in Tennessee[1]. With Tipper, he has four children: Karenna (born August 6, 1973), married to Drew Schiff; Kristin (born June 5, 1977), Sarah (born January 7, 1979), and Albert (born October 19, 1982). The Gores also have two grandchildren: Wyatt and Anna Schiff.
Vice President Gore owns a small farm near Carthage, and the family attends New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Carthage.
Career as journalist
Although opposed to the Vietnam war, on August 7, 1969, Gore enrolled in the army to participate in the Vietnam War effort. After completing training as a military journalist, Gore shipped to Vietnam in early 1971. He served as an Army war correspondent until May 24 of that year, slightly less than two years after he enlisted.
After returning from Vietnam, Gore spent five years as a reporter for the Tennessean, a newspaper headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. During this time, Gore also attended Vanderbilt Divinity School and Law School, although he did not complete a degree at either. Gore's mother was a member of Vanderbilt Law School's first class to accept women.
Early political career
In the spring of 1976, Gore quit law school to run for the U.S. House, in Tennessee's Fourth District. Gore defeated Stanley Rogers in the Democratic primary, then ran unopposed and was elected to his first Congressional post. He was re-elected three times, in 1978, 1980, and 1982. In 1984 Gore did not run for the House; instead he successfully ran for a seat in the Senate. Gore served as the Senator from Tennessee until 1992, when he was elected Vice President.
In 1988, Gore ran for President but failed to obtain the Democratic nomination, which went instead to Michael Dukakis.
On April 3, 1989, Gore's six-year-old son Albert was nearly killed in an automobile accident while leaving the Baltimore Orioles opening game. Because of this and the resulting lengthy healing process, his father chose to stay near him during the recovery instead of laying the foundation for a presidential primary campaign against eventual nominee Bill Clinton. Gore started writing Earth in the Balance, his book on environmental conservation, during his son's recovery.
Vice Presidency
Governor Bill Clinton chose then-U.S. Senator Gore to be his running mate on July 9, 1992. After winning the U.S. presidential election, 1992, Al Gore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Gore were re-elected to a second term in the U.S. presidential election, 1996.
Gore was mostly a behind-the-scenes player in his tenure as Vice President. Early in their first term, the president enlisted Gore to study the entire federal government to pinpoint wasteful areas. Gore's National Performance Review guided Clinton when he downsized the government. The vice president was also instrumental in the passage of 1993's North American Free Trade Agreement.
The president often looked to Gore for advice on foreign-policy issues (partly for which Gore was nominated due to Clinton's lack of experience in the field as Governor) Gore favored action against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 1998. He also supported the bombing campaign (Operation Desert Fox) in Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein's unwillingness to cooperate with UN inspectors.
The Clinton Administration led the United States into the longest period of sustained economic growth in American history -- marked by 22 million new jobs, and real incomes rising for the first time in a generation.
2000 candidacy
After two terms as Vice President, Gore again ran for President. In the Democratic primaries, Gore faced an early challenge from Bill Bradley. Bradley withdrew from the race in early March 2000 after Gore won every primary election.
During the entire U.S. presidential election, 2000, Gore was neck and neck in the polls with Governor of Texas George W. Bush. The actual vote on November 7 was so close that it gave rise to litigation that took more than a month to settle. Although he won the nationwide popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, he lost by 5 electoral votes, with the outcome ultimately decided by only a few hundred popular votes in Florida. Gore ended up receiving the most votes of any Democrat candidate in history.
Private citizen
In 2003 Gore joined the board of directors of Apple Computer. He also made the news around this time when it was reported that he was looking to buy the Vivendi Cable Network to start a news station that would have a combination of CNN and MTV and would try to reach to young viewers. However, till this point in time, no deal has been struck between the Gore led group and Vivendi. On the political front, Gore kept his promise of staying involved in public debate when he offered his criticism and advice to the Bush Administration on key issues such as the Occupation of Iraq, USA Patriot Act, and the environment.
2004 presidential election
Initially, Al Gore was touted as the most logical opponent of George W. Bush in the 2004 United States Presidential Election. "Re-elect Gore!" was a common slogan among many Democrats who felt the former Vice President had been unfairly cheated out the presidency, despite winning of the popular vote. On December 16, 2002 however, Gore announced that he would not run in 2004, saying that it was time for "fresh faces" and "new ideas" to emerge from the Democrats. When he appeared on a 60 Minutes interview, Gore said that he felt if he would have ran, the election would be made into a rematch of President Bush and himself, and would not have focused on the issues that needed to be addressed. Gore's former running mate, Joe Lieberman quickly announced his own candidacy, something he vowed he would not do if Gore ran.
In a surprise move that shocked many political pundits, Al Gore publicly endorsed former Vermont Governor Howard Dean (over his former running mate Liberman) weeks before the first primary of the election cycle.
Many believe that while Dean was the front-runner with respect to polling in the early primary states and the top fundraiser, this move in many ways legitimized Dean into the establishment faction of the Democratic Party, leaving Dean in a very strong position to win the Democratic nomination.
Academic career
On March 21, 2000, the Washington Post reported on Gore's academic performance at Harvard. The news article included the information that, during Gore's second year, he earned a D in one science course, a C-minus in introductory economics, and two C-pluses and a B-minus in other, unspecified courses. The article also stated that, during his junior year, Gore earned a B, B-plus, and an A-minus in three government courses. (See United States academic grade.) Gore graduated from Harvard cum laude based on his strong senior thesis, on the impact of television on the U.S. presidency.
This Washington Post article was subsequently picked up by many conservative news organizations, who repeated the story with several alterations. The Boston Globe claimed that Gore's transcript was "riddled with C's". Many conservative commentators also called attention to the fact that, at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Gore failed five of the eight classes he took over three semesters, and that Gore never completed his degree at Vanderbilt Law School. During the 2000 Presidential campaign, conservatives pointed out that this evidence seemed to contradict the popular perception that George W. Bush was the less intelligent of the two candidates.
In rebuttal, Gore defenders noted that:
Nevertheless, in 2002, a search of Google for "Al Gore grades" revealed many sites that criticized Gore for his weak sophomore year grades without mentioning the rest of his academic career. Some observers chalked this up to the echo chamber effect.
Military service
American politicians, like political figures everywhere, are frequently questioned about their military service: faithful military service is taken as a sign of patriotism and commitment to civic duty. Some conservatives accused Al Gore of insufficient military service, even though he served for nearly two years, because he was "only" a journalist and he served five months in Vietnam. These accusations were frequently made during the 2000 presidential election, even though Gore's opponent, George W. Bush, avoided serving in Vietnam altogether by joining the Texas National Guard.
Gore served in the Army from August 1969 to May 1971. The chronology of his military service is as follows:
Gore served only five months in Vietnam, which some sources have characterized as "less than half the standard two-year tour". Although this is true, Gore served in the Army only 75 fewer days than the standard two-year term. Gore was not shipped immediately to Vietnam after completing basic training, spending most of his term in Fort Rucker.
Because Gore was a journalist, he was never exposed to front-line combat, and some allege that his famous father's influence helped him to obtain this position. However, others argue that any man who enlisted with a Harvard degree had a good chance of being assigned a support specialty rather than an infantry position.
Once in Vietnam, some also allege that Gore received special treatment as a former Senator's son (Gore Sr. lost the 1970 election, and was no longer a Senator by the time Gore arrived in Vietnam). According to combat photographer H. Alan Leo, Gore was protected from dangerous situations at the request of Brigadier General Kenneth B. Cooper, the 20th Engineer Brigades Commander. Leo stated that Gore's trips into the field were safe, and that Leo "could have worn a tuxedo." These remarks seem to contradict Gore's public statements that he "walked through the elephant grass" and "was fired upon".
For his part, Gore has stated that he knew Leo but rarely traveled with him in Vietnam, and that he never felt that he was being given special protection. On the other hand, Leo's testimony is that Cooper gave the orders before Gore arrived, so Gore would not know about them. The question of whether Leo freqently traveled with Gore or not still has not been conclusively answered.
Influence on the Internet
On March 9, 1999, Wolf Blitzer interviewed Gore on CNN. During this interview, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Conservative news outlets, pundits, and activists quickly took this statement and repeated many variations on it in order to discredit Gore. The statement soon metamorphosed into the meme "Al Gore said he invented the Internet!" One Republican press release noted that the ARPANET, the Internet's predecessor, existed in 1971, five years before Gore even ran for Congress.
However, observers noted that the ARPANET was a relatively small public-sector research project, whereas the Internet is a massive private-sector project that was created much later. Gore's statement referred specifically to his introduction around 1990 of a bill designed to fund the creation of an "information systems highway" for education. The bill itself, and the phrase "information superhighway" in particular, were widely seen as factors in advancing the growth of the Internet.
On September 28, 2000, an email jointly signed by Vint Cerf (often called the "father of the Internet") and Robert Kahn stated the following:
Gore and the environment
Gore's book Earth in the Balance gave Gore a reputation for strongly pro-environmentalist views. This reputation was an asset with some constituencies, but because of it Gore was often accused of environmental hypocrisy, environmental radicalism, or both.
Corporate use of Gore family land
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Gore was accused of hypocrisy because of the behavior of corporations that had contracted to extract resources from land owned by his family. The corporations were the Occidental Petroleum Corporation and the Pasminco Zinc Mine.
Al Gore owned (indirectly through his father's estate) several thousand shares of Occidental Petroleum Corporation. Occidental Petroleum angered environmentalists by trying to open a new oil/gas drilling field in Colombia.
Additionally, the Gore family licensed mining rights on their Cumberland River Valley farm to Pasminco Zinc, which was fined in 2000 for exceeding water pollution limits. Specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency found that zinc levels in the Caney Fork river near the mine were 1.480 mg/L (milligrams per liter); the maximum allowed monthly average was .65 mg/L, and the daily allowed maximum was 1.30 mg/L. Therefore, Pasminco Zinc was found on one occasion to exceed the daily maximum for zinc pollution by about 14%.
However, even the conservative Wall Street Journal stated that "mining is intrinsically a messy business, and Pasminco Zinc generally has a good environmental record" (The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2000). Two independent tests sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, conducted in September 1999 and June 2000, found that the water in the river was within legal limits, although soil tests near the river revealed troublingly high levels of heavy metals.
Gore and the internal combustion engine
Ironically, even as Gore was criticized for being insufficiently environmentalist, he was simultaneously attacked for being too radical an environmentalist. Conservative commentators frequently claimed that Gore wanted to "ban the internal combustion engine". The basis for these claims was quote on p. 326 of Earth in the Balance:
This quote clearly does not advocate the banning of the internal combustion engine. The relevant chapter advocated the replacement of the internal combustion engine with more advanced technology. Many agreed with Gore's assessment, and not only radical environmentalists---in 1998, John Smith, then C.E.O. of General Motors, said:
Nevertheless, conservatives attacked Gore, attributing different positions to him. For example, Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican National Committee, stated that Gore was "a wasteful dreamer" who was trying to "do away with the internal combustion engine [and] the automobile". (New York Times, March 16, 1999) (note also that Gore never advocated the elimination of the automobile). Nicholson also said that
Throughout the election, the United States press did not call attention to the gulf between Gore's statements and the claims of his critics on this issue.
Some contend that, since Gore received a larger share of the popular vote, he actually won, and failed to become President only because of a technicality. Some call this fact irrelevant, as the processes of the American electoral system do not grant any explicit power to the popular vote. However, others note that, in previous elections in American history wherein the popular and electoral votes did not coincide, the elected President was assumed to lack a strong "popular mandate". These people claim the electoral college is a systemic flaw that should be corrected; and that Al Gore should not be faulted for "losing" when he received more votes than his opponent.
Although no independent evidence exists that supports their claims, some supports contend that a plurality of Florida voters did vote for Gore, and George W. Bush won by successfully preventing the votes from being counted. Since the election, recounts have been conducted by dozens of news organizations from around the world with results that are confusing at best. Some have claimed that Bush would have actually increased his lead if state wide recounts had taken place, others claim that Gore would have won the recounts.
In any case, Gore did not assume the office of President. Speculations as to the failure of Gore's political strategy include the following:
Some conclude that the observation of Gore's alleged personality flaws seems to have originated with (and been propagated by) conservative news organizations. Regardless of voters' original reactions, however, subsequent press coverage concentrated heavily on Gore's sighs and other perceived flaws.
Gore's behavior during the first debate was even the basis for a sketch on NBC's Saturday Night Live television program, which according to some sources, members of Gore's campaign asked him to watch before the next debate. Whether or not he watched the sketch, his behavior was noticeably subdued in the second debate. On Election Day, Gore himself would appear on a Saturday Night Live prime time special to make a few jokes about this behavior.
Gore in the 2000 presidential election
There are many opinions, frequently contradictory, on why Gore lost the 2000 election.The Clinton problem
It is widely believed that Gore made insufficient efforts to link himself to the Clinton administration's policies. Many speculate that Gore was too eager to dissociate himself from Clinton's personal scandals. Gore's personality
Much attention was paid to Gore's audible sighing while Bush was answering questions in the first of the Bush/Gore debates. CNN instant polls immediately following this debate found that viewers felt Gore had won by a narrow margin. Twenty-two voters were interviewed by CNN, and none of them volunteered comments on Gore's behavior (CNN, October 3 2000). When given explicit, leading questions by conservative Frank Luntz of the MSNBC channel, an equal number of viewers were troubled by Gore's sighs and Bush's repeated invocations of "fuzzy math" (see George W. Bush). Populist rhetoric
Gore ran on a somewhat more populist platform than his predecessor Clinton. Although Gore supported trade liberalization and many other Clintonite reforms, he also used rhetoric that drew attention to growing gaps between rich and poor in American society. Some found this language divisive. However, the notion that this position hurt his popularity is contradicted by the fact that his poll numbers went up substantially shortly after his strongly populist speech on August 16, 2000 at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.Related articles
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