Al Gore
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American Democratic politician 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 won the national popular vote but 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. and Pauline Lafon. Since his father was a veteran Democratic Senator from Tennessee, Al Gore Jr. divided his childhood between Washington, D.C. (where his father worked) and Carthage, Tennessee. During the school year, the younger Gore 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. 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.
The Gores reside just outside of Nashville, and own a small farm near Carthage. The family attends New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Carthage.
Academic record
On March 21, 2000, The Washington Post reported that in his second year at Harvard, Gore 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 and during his junior year, Gore earned a B, B-plus, and an A-minus in three government courses. (See United States academic grade.)
During the 2000 Presidential campaign, critics pointed out that this evidence seemed to contradict the popular perception that George W. Bush was the less intelligent of the two candidates. Gore failed five of the eight classes he took over three semesters at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and he never completed his degree at Vanderbilt Law School.
In rebuttal, Gore defenders noted that on IQ tests taken in 1961 and 1964, Gore scored 133 and 134 respectively, which placed him above the 95th percentile in the general population. Prior to his attending Harvard, Gore graduated from St. Albans ranked 25th in a class of 51, and scored 1355 on his SAT test, well above average. Gore also graduated from Harvard cum laude with his senior thesis, "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947-1969."
His sophomore year was his worst year, academically, and was not representative of his college career. Gore was working at the Tennessean, and also dealing with his recently born baby daughter, during his time at Vanderbilt Divinity school. Under such conditions, it was perhaps understandable, Gore's allies stated, that Gore would not prioritize his studies.
Gore left Vanderbilt Law School because he decided to run for Congress instead. It was therefore unfair, Gore supporters asserted, to accuse Gore of being an academic failure for not completing his law degree.
Therefore, Gore advocates claimed, it was reasonable to assume that Gore was intelligent and academically successful, although perhaps not exceptionally so.
Vietnam and journalism
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.
- For more information on Gore's Vietnam service, see: [1], [2], [3], as well as further information below.
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.
Military service
Gore served in the Army from August 1969 to May 1971. The chronology of his military service is as follows:
- August 1969: Enlisted at the Newark, New Jersey recruiting office.
- August to October 1969: 8 weeks of basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey
- Late October 1969 to December 1970: Fort Rucker, Alabama, on-the-job occupational training at the Army Flier newspaper.
- January 1971 to May 1971: field reporter in Vietnam, part of the 20th Engineer Brigade, stationed primarily at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon.
- May 24, 1971: Discharged, after granting of early discharge request, as part of general troop reductions.
Gore stated many times that he opposed the Vietnam War, but chose to enlist anyway. Some observers have noted that Gore could have avoided Vietnam in a number of ways. Gore considered all these options, but said that his sense of civic duty compelled him to serve. Some have suggested that Gore already foresaw that military service might be advantageous in his future career in politics.
During the 2000 presidential election, some conservatives accused Al Gore of insufficient military service, because he was "only" a journalist and spent 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.
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, which had been vacated by Republican leader, Howard Baker. 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. Earth in the Balance became the first book written by a sitting senator to make the New York Times best-seller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.
While in Congress, Gore was a member of the following committees: Armed Services (Defense Industry and Technology Projection Forces and Regional Defense; Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence); Commerce, Science and Transportation (Communications; Consumer; Science, Technology and Space- chairman 1992; Surface Transportation; National Ocean Policy Study); Joint Committee on Printing; Joint Economic Committee; Rules and Administration.
Vice Presidency
President Nelson Mandela.
Bill Clinton chose then-U.S. Senator Al 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.
During his time as Vice President, Al Gore was mostly a behind the scenes player. However, many experts consider him to be one of the most active and influential Vice Presidents in U.S. history. One of Gore's major accomplishments as Vice President was the National Performance Review, which pointed out waste, fraud, and other abuse in the federal government and stressed the need for cutting the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations. His book later helped guide President Clinton when he down sized the federal government. In 1993 Gore debated Ross Perot on CNN's Larry King Live on the issue of free trade. He is widely believed to have won the debate hands down, and public opinion polls taken after the debate showed that a majority of Americans agreed with his point of view and supported NAFTA. Some claim that this performance may have been responsible for the passing of NAFTA in the House of Representatives, where it passed 234-200.
As Vice President, Gore instituted a federal program that called for all schools and libraries to be wired to the Internet. This was a culmination of work that he had started several years before. While serving in the Senate, Gore had introduced legislation which called for the creation of a new federal research center for educational computing to support an "information systems highway".
During Gore's tenure as Vice President, he was a strong proponent for environmental protection . While a senator working on his book Earth in the Balance, Gore had traveled around the world on numerous fact finding missions.
The insight he gained on issues such as global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the destruction of rain forests is said to have played a major role in policy making for the Clinton administration. In 1998 and 1999, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in green house emissions.
Due to President Clinton's inexperience and Gore's service in Vietnam and in the Senate, Gore was often looked upon by President Clinton for advice in the area of foreign policy. He was on the first to call for action, that would remove Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from power in 1998. Gore also supported the bombing campaign (Operation Desert Fox) against Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein's unwillingness to cooperate with UN inspectors.
Together Bill Clinton and Al Gore led the United States into the longest period of peace and sustained economic growth in American history. At the end of their term in office, Clinton and Gore could point to a number of economic accomplishments, which include:
- More than 22 million new jobs
- Highest homeownership in American history
- Lowest unemployment in 30 years
- Paid off $360 billion of the national debt (although total national debt at the end of the administration was still approximately $1.5 trillion dollars higher than at the beginning)
- Lowest poverty rate in 20 years
- Higher incomes at all levels
- Converted the largest budget deficit in American history to the largest surplus
- Lowest government spending in three decades
- Lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years
- More families own stock than ever before
2000 presidential election
After two terms as Vice President, Gore 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.
In August 2000, Gore surprised many when he selected United States senator Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate. Lieberman, who was a more conservative Democrat than Gore, had publicly blasted President Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair. Lieberman became the first Jew to be named to a major party's national ticket. Many pundits saw Gore's choice of Lieberman as another way of trying to distance himself from the scandalous Clinton White House.
During the entire U.S. presidential election, 2000, Gore was neck and neck in the polls with Republican Governor of Texas George W. Bush. On election day, the results were so close that the outcome of the race took over a month to resolve, highlighted by premature declaration of a winner on election night, and an extremely close result in the state of Florida. Florida's 25 electoral votes ultimately decided the election by a razor thin margin of actual votes, and was certified only after numerous court challenges and recounts. Al Gore publicly conceded the election after the Supreme Court, in the case Bush v. Gore, voted 7-2 to declare the recount procedure in process unconstitutional because it was not being carried out statewide and 5-4 to ban further recounts using other procedures. Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but decided that "for the sake of our unity of the people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession." He had previously made a concession phone call to Bush the night of the election, but quickly retracted it after learning just how close the election was. Following the election, a subsequent recount conducted by various U.S. news media organizations indicated that Bush would still have won the popular vote in Florida had the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the recounts to proceed using the process requested by Gore, although some different methods of counting votes would have resulted in victory for Gore.
The Florida election has been closely scrutinized since the election, and several irregularities are thought to have favored Bush. These included the notorious Palm Beach "butterfly ballot", which produced an unexpectedly large number of votes for third-party candidate Patrick Buchanan, and a purge of some 50,000 alleged felons from the Florida voting rolls that included many voters who were eligible to vote under Florida law. Some commentators still consider such irregularities and the legal maneuvering around the recounts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote, but as a matter of law the issue was settled when the United States Congress accepted Florida's electoral delegation. Nonetheless, embarrassment about the Florida vote uncertainties led to widespread calls for electoral reform in the United States, and ultimately to the passage of the Help America Vote Act, which authorized the United States federal government to provide funds to the states to replace their mechanical voting equipment with electronic voting equipment. However, this has led to new controversies, because of the security weaknesses of the computer systems, the lack of paper-based methods of secure verification, and the necessity to rely on the trustworthiness of the manufacturers.
Although Gore won the nationwide popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, receiving the most votes of any Democrat in U.S. history, he lost the election by five electoral votes. A swing of only a few hundred popular votes in Florda would have caused the election to go the other way. It was for that reason that the outcome remained unknown until the Supreme Court's decision concerning the counting of the Florida votes.
- For more information on Al Gore's 2000 campaign, see: Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000
- For more information on the 2000 election, see: 2000 Presidential Election
Speculation on the defeat
There are many opinions, frequently contradictory, on why Gore lost the 2000 election.
It was a bitter defeat for many Gore supporters, since he received the plurality of the popular vote, and failed to become President because the American electoral system does not grant any status to the overall popular vote. 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". This has been a reason for many to criticize the U.S. Electoral College as a systemic flaw that should be corrected. The 2000 election led some Democrats to renew this long-standing proposal, but supporters have been unable to accomplish the difficult task of amending the United States Constitution.
Some Gore supporters contend that a plurality of Florida voters did vote for Gore, and George W. Bush won by successfully preventing the votes from being counted; however, the evidence regarding the final vote tally is inconclusive. 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.
Speculations as to the failure of Gore's political strategy include the following:
- The Clinton problem: The Clinton administration had presided over an economic boom and the balancing of the federal budget. Normally, a Vice President running under such circumstances would have played up his connection to the administration. Clinton's personal scandals, however, made that approach more problematic for Gore. It has been suggested that he should have involved Clinton much more heavily in his campaign; others have said that he should have done more to distance himself from Clinton.
- 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). 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.
- 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 challenged 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.
- The Republicans' "Solid South": Gore, a southerner himself, had won every election he had ever ran in the south before the 2000 election. However, between the time that Clinton and Gore were first elected in 1992, many democrats changed parties, due to the growing conservative base in the region. Although Gore would have won the election if he would have won virtually any other state in the union, many attribute not winning any southern states to his loss.
Private citizen
Following his election loss, a bearded Gore accepted visiting professorships at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Middle Tennessee State University. In 2002, Al Gore accepted a consulting job with a Los Angeles law firm and became an adviser to Google. Following the November 5, 2002 midterm elections Gore re-emerged into the public eye with a 14-city book tour and a well-orchestrated "full Gore" media blitz which included a pair of policy speeches. On September 23, Gore delivered a speech on the impending War with Iraq and the War on Terrorism that generated a fair amount of commentary. Less than two weeks later, on October 2, he made a speech on Bush's handling of the economy to the Brookings Institution. Also, during this time period Gore guest starred on several programs such as the David Letterman Show and Saturday Night Live appearing much more relaxed and funnier as a private citizen than he did while holding public office.
In 2003 Gore joined the board of directors of Apple Computer. 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 topics such as the Occupation of Iraq, USA Patriot Act, and environmental issuses, most notably global warming.
On April 10, 2004, Gore met with the 9-11 Commission in private to give his testimony on what his administration did to prevent terror attacks. In a statement after the three-hour session, the commission said he was candid and forthcoming, and it thanked him for his "continued cooperation." [4]
In the summer of 2004, Gore teamed up with MoveOn.org, to promote the new scientific fiction film, The Day After Tomorrow. Although Gore said the movie was a far fetched example of global warming, he said the movie would escalate the public debate on global warming.
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, on the grounds that he had won 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 had run, the focus of the election would be the rematch rather than the issues. Gore's former running mate, Joe Lieberman quickly announced his own candidacy, something he vowed he would not do if Gore ran.
Despite his announcement about not running in 2004, a national camapign was formed by a handful of Gore supporters, that intended to draft him into running. However, all efforts came to an end when he publicly endorsed Vermont Governor Howard Dean (over his former running mate Joe Lieberman) 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. But this move also led the media to dub Dean as the clear front-runner, putting him in such a position of strength that his opponents devoted more of their emphasis to weakening him. Despite substantial leads in pre-election polling, Dean was hurt enough that he failed to win any of the initial contests in democratic nomination process and his poor performance prompted him to stop campaigning after losing the Wisconsin primary.
On February 9, 2004, on the eve of the Tennessee primary, Gore gave what many consider his most harsh criticism of the president yet when he accused the President, George W. Bush, of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. "He betrayed this country!" Mr. Gore shouted into the microphone. "He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place." Gore also urged all Democrats to unite behind their eventual nominee proclaiming, "any one of these candidates is far better than George W. Bush." In March 2004 Gore, along with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, united behind the Democratic nominee, John Kerry.
On April 28, 2004, Gore announced that he would be donating $6 million to various Democratic Party groups. Drawing from his funds left over from his 2000 presidential campaign, Gore pledged to donate $4 million to the Democratic National Committee. The party's Senate and House committees would each get $1 million, and the party from Gore's home state of Tennessee would receive $250,000.
In addition, Gore announced that all of the surplus funds in his "Recount Fund" from the 2000 election controversy that resulted in the US Supreme Court halting the counting of the ballots, a total of $240,000, will be donated to the Florida Democratic Party.
Gore added, "I want to help John Kerry become president and I want to help Democrats retake control of the U.S. Senate and House," and he said he would help Kerry fight "outrageous and misleading" attacks from the White House.
On May 26, 2004, Gore gave a highly critical speech on the Iraq crisis and the Bush Administration. In the speech, Gore demanded Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Director of Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone all to resign for encouraging policies that led to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and fanned hatred of Americans abroad.
During the fiery speech, which lasted more than an hour, Gore called the Bush administration's Iraq war plan "incompetent" and called George W. Bush the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon, who resigned the office of the presidency in 1974 following the Watergate scandal.
Gore also decried the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, saying, "what happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples. It was the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy."
He later passionately added, "how dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace! How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison!"
"President Bush has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every town and city to a greater danger of attacks by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornets nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us."
"[T]he administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners."
Television network
On May 4, 2004, INdTV Holdings, a company co-founded by Gore and Joel Hyatt, purchased cable news channel NewsWorld International from Vivendi Universal. The new network will not have political leanings, Gore said, but will serve as an "independent voice" for a target audience of people between 18 and 34 "who want to learn about the world in a voice they recognize and a view they recognize as their own."
"This is not going to be a liberal network or a Democrat network or a political network in any way, shape or form," Gore said. Other reports say that Gore hopes that the channel will help change the tide of "consolidation and conglomeratization" of the media by leading the change to "democratization."
Gore, as noted above, wrote his thesis on the effect of television on the Presidency. He has also been interested in television shows, like MTV's UNfiltered, and Internet-based discussions, like those Howard Dean used to communicate with his supporters.
The news network is said to be a combination between CNN and MTV and would try to reach young viewers.
NewsWorld International is currently seen in 17 million homes across the country and features 24-hour international news programming provided by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which will continue to produce news content for Gore's new network.
Views and controversies
Al Gore's views are roughly those of a populist liberal. Gore is a strong supporter of "a woman's right to choose", free trade, and tax cuts for the middle class. He was also a vocal opponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
See also: Al Gore's views.
Gore has also been involved in a number of controversies. Some say the press unfairly misinterpreted his statements and painted him as a liar, possibly because of a smear campaign run by his political enemies.
See also: Al Gore controversies
External links
- General
- Recent Speeches by Al Gore
- Al Gore and the Internet
- Al Gore Myths and Media Bias
| Preceded by: Dan Quayle |
Vice President of the United States 1993-2001 |
Succeeded by: Dick Cheney |