Encyclopedia
- This article is about the former United States Vice President. For his father, see Albert Gore, Sr.
Albert Arnold Gore, Sr., an American [i] politician [i] of the Democratic Party [i] ...
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., is an
American politician,
teacher,
businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th
Vice President of the United States in the
Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. Previously, he had served as a
Representative and
Senator from
Tennessee.
Gore was the Democratic nominee for president in the
2000 Presidential election. Gore won a plurality of the popular vote, with over half a million more votes than the Republican candidate
George W. Bush, but was defeated in the
Electoral College by a vote of 271 to 266.
Gore currently is president of the American television channel Current, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of
Apple Computer, and an unofficial adviser to
Google's senior management. He lectures widely on the topic of
global warming, which he calls "the climate crisis." Gore appeared on the MTV Video Music Awards on August 31, 2006 speaking about global warming.
Although speculation about a possible
Presidential run in 2008 continues, he has been quoted as recently as June 4, 2006, as saying, "I have no plans to run for President again," but hasn’t ruled out a future in politics.
Gore's popularity has seen a dramatic increase among grassroots Democrats, with Gore getting 68% of support among potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidates on a May 2006
DailyKos poll, and on July 13, 2006, an AlterNet poll had 35% of respondents selecting Gore as their preferred Democratic candidate in 2008. . In addition, a Gallup poll released in August 2006 showed that nearly half of Americans view Gore favorably .
Early life
Al Gore was born in
Washington, D.C., to
Albert A. Gore, Sr., a former
U.S. Senator from
Tennessee, seated 1953-1971, and Pauline LaFon Gore, one of the first women to graduate from
Vanderbilt Law School. Since his father was a veteran Democratic senator from Tennessee, Al Gore Jr. divided his childhood between Washington, D.C., and
Carthage, Tennessee. During the school year, the younger Gore lived in a hotel in Washington; during summer vacations, he lived in Carthage, where he worked on the Gore family
tobacco farm.
Gore had one sister, Nancy Gore Hunger , who died of
lung cancer, an issue important to her brother in subsequent years.
Education
Gore attended the elite St. Albans School where he ranked 25th in his senior class. In preparation for his college applications, Gore scored a 1355 on his SAT . Al Gore's
IQ scores, from tests administered at St. Alban's School in 1961 and 1964 respectively, have been recorded as 133 and 134.
In 1965, Gore enrolled at
Harvard College, the only university to which he applied. His roommate was actor
Tommy Lee Jones. He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row and, after finding himself bored with his classes in his declared English major, Gore switched majors and worked hard in his government courses and graduated from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government. After returning from the military he took religious studies courses at
Vanderbilt and then entered the university's law school. He left Vanderbilt without a degree when he left to run for an open seat in Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District in 1976.
Family
In 1970, Gore married Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson , whom he had first met many years before at his high school senior
prom . They have four children:
Karenna , married to Drew Schiff; Kristin ; Sarah ; and
Al III . The Gores also have two grandchildren: Wyatt and Anna Schiff.
The Gores reside in
Nashville, Tennessee, and own a small farm near Carthage. The family attends New Salem Missionary
Baptist Church in Carthage. The Gores in late 2005 bought a condo at San Francisco's St. Regis.
Soldier and journalist
Although opposed to the
Vietnam War, on August 7, 1969, Gore voluntarily enlisted in the
army in order to participate in the war. After basic training at
Fort Dix, Gore was assigned as a military journalist writing for
The Army Flier, the base newspaper at
Fort Rucker. With seven months remaining in his enlistment, he was shipped to
Vietnam, arriving January 2, 1971. He served for four months with the
20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa and for another month at the Army Engineer Command in Long Binh. As his unit was standing down, he applied for and received a non-essential personnel discharge two months early in order to attend divinity school at
Vanderbilt University. The chronology of Gore's military service is as follows:
- August 1969: Enlisted at the Newark, New Jersey recruiting office.
- August to October 1969: Eight weeks of basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
- Late October 1969 to December 1970: writer for the Army Flier newspaper at Fort Rucker, Alabama.
- January 2, 1971 to May 22, 1971: field reporter in Vietnam, part of the 20th Engineer Brigade, stationed primarily at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon.
- May 24, 1971: Given an honorable discharge, after his early discharge request was granted.
Gore opposed the Vietnam War, but chose to volunteer anyway though he could have avoided serving in Vietnam in a number of ways. A friend of the Gore family reserved a spot for him in the National Guard, which he turned down. Gore has stated that his sense of civic duty compelled him to serve.
Gore stated in 1988 that his experience in Vietnam:
- didn't change my conclusions about the war being a terrible mistake, but it struck me that opponents to the war, including myself, really did not take into account the fact that there were an awful lot of South Vietnamese who desperately wanted to hang on to what they called freedom. Coming face to face with those sentiments expressed by people who did the laundry and ran the restaurants and worked in the fields was something I was naively unprepared for.
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.
Politics
Congressional Service
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 in the general election and was elected to his first
Congressional post. He was re-elected three times, in
1978,
1980, and
1982. In
1984 Gore successfully ran for a seat in the
Senate, which had been vacated by Republican Majority Leader
Howard Baker. Gore served as a Senator from Tennessee until 1993, when he became Vice President.
While in Congress, Gore was a member of the following committees: Armed Services ; Commerce, Science and Transportation ; Joint Committee on Printing; Joint Economic Committee; and Rules and Administration.
1988 Presidential run
In 1988, Gore ran for President but failed to obtain the Democratic nomination, which went to
Michael Dukakis. During the campaign, Gore's strategy involved skipping the Iowa caucus and putting little emphasis on the New Hampshire Primary in order to concentrate his efforts on
the South. He won Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee in the Super Tuesday primaries but dropped out of the presidential race in April after a poor showing in the New York primary.
Son's accident and effect on 1992 presidential campaign
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. Gore started writing
Earth in the Balance is a 1992 book [i] written by ...
, 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 is a newspaper [i] published in New York City [i] by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. [i] ...
best-seller list since
John F. Kennedy's
Profiles in Courage is a book by John F. Kennedy [i], describing acts of bravery and integrity by ei ...
.
Vice Presidency
Bill Clinton chose Gore to be his running mate on July 9, 1992, to the surprise of many as the two were both young and were from the same region of the nation. After winning the
1992 election, 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
1996 election.
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. This was evident as Gore had weekly lunches with Clinton to keep each other abreast of current developments.
Debate with Perot
In 1993, Gore debated
Ross Perot on
CNN's
Larry King Live on the issue of free trade. Public opinion polls taken after the debate showed that a majority of Americans agreed with Gore's 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.
Initiatives
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.
Environment
While a Representative, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978-79, and hearings on global warming in the 1980s. While a senator working on his book
Earth in the Balance, Gore had traveled around the world on numerous fact-finding missions. During Gore's tenure as Vice President, he was a proponent for environmental protection. On
Earth Day 1994, Gore launched the worldwide
GLOBE program, an innovative hands-on, school-based education and science activity that made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment and contribute research data for scientists.
In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the
Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
. However, many of these proposals were not enacted by Congress, and/or were not implemented to the satisfaction of critics such as
Ralph Nader. In 1998, Senator
Robert Byrd of West Virginia wrote Resolution S. 98 that opposed ratification of the Kyoto treaty, and in turn the Senate voted 95 to 0 against the treaty.
Foreign policy
Because of President Clinton's relative inexperience in foreign policy matters and Gore's service in Vietnam and in the Senate, Clinton often looked to Gore for advice in the area of foreign policy. Gore was one of the first to call for action to remove
Yugoslav President
Slobodan Miloševic from power in 1998. Gore also supported
Operation Desert Fox, a three day bombing campaign against
Iraq that attempted to "degrade
Saddam Hussein's ability to make and to use weapons of mass destruction."
Economy
Gore supporters point out that during the Clinton/Gore administration, the American economy expanded for eight years. They attribute this growth to the policies of the Clinton/Gore administration, and especially to the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, for which Gore cast the tie-breaking vote. The Administration worked closely with the Republican-led House to slow federal spending and eventually balance the federal budget.
During his 2000 campaign for the presidency, Gore himself attributed positive economic results to his and Clinton's policies -- more than 22 million new jobs, the highest homeownership in American history , the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the paying off of $360 billion of the national debt, the lowest poverty rate in 20 years, higher incomes at all levels, the conversion of the hitherto largest budget deficit, in American history into the largest surplus, the lowest government spending in three decades, the lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years, and more families owning stocks than had up to that point. However Gore later placed a large share of the blame for his election loss on the economic downturn and
NASDAQ crash of March 2000 in an interview with
National Public Radio's
Bob Edwards.
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. Gore's nomination was never really in doubt and Bradley withdrew from the race in early March 2000 after failing to win any state primary or caucus.
In August 2000, Gore surprised manywhen he selected Senator
Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate. Lieberman, who is a more conservative Democrat than Gore, had publicly blasted President Clinton for the
Monica Lewinsky affair. Many pundits saw Gore's choice of Lieberman as another way of trying to distance himself from the scandal-prone Clinton White House. Lieberman was also the first Jewish nominee on a major party's national ticket.
During the entire campaign, 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 the premature declaration of a winner on election night, and an extremely close result in the state of
Florida. On election night, news networks first called Florida for Gore, later retracted the projection, then called Florida for Bush, before finally retracted that projection.
The race was ultimately decided by a razor thin margin of only 537 votes in Florida. Florida's 25 electoral votes were awarded to
George W. Bush only after numerous court challenges. Gore publicly conceded the election after the
Supreme Court in
Bush v. Gore voted 7 to 2 to declare the ongoing recount procedure unconstitutional because it feared that different standards would be used in different parts of the state, and 5 to 4 to ban recounts using other procedures. Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but decided "for the sake of our unity of the people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession." Following the election, a subsequent recount conducted by various U.S. news media organizations indicated that Bush would have won using the partial recount method of four strongly Democratic areas advocated by Gore, but that Gore would have won given a full recount of the state if overvotes were counted, regardless of whether the undervotes were subjected to rigorous or loose standards, or a standard in between , and/or disputed absentee ballots were counted.
The states that ultimately voted for Gore over Bush in the 2000 elections were New York , New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico , California , Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, and Hawaii giving Gore 267 electoral votes to Bush's 271. During the formal Electoral College vote in DC, one of Gore's electors cast a blank ballot to protest what she called DC's "colonial status," thus Gore's final number of electoral votes was 266. Gore became only the third nominee to win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote.
The Florida election has been closely scrutinized since the election. Critics have argued that the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush and the Secretary of State of Florida, Katherine Harris, did play a part in ensuring that the state was in the red column of the Republicans come election day. Some irregularities are thought to have favored Bush, and some may have given Gore an edge. Irregularities favoring Bush included the notorious Palm Beach "
butterfly ballots," which were alleged to have produced a large number of mistaken votes for
Reform Party candidate
Pat Buchanan intended for Gore, and a purge of some 50,000 alleged felons from the Florida voting rolls that included some voters who were again eligible to vote under Florida law. Furthermore, most major news networks prematurely projected Gore as the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes at 7:52 p.m. Eastern Time. This happened before the polls closed in ten Florida counties in the heavily Republican western panhandle which are in the Central Time Zone, and thus closed at 7 p.m. Central Time . This may have depressed the pro-Bush vote as panhandle residents waiting to, or going to, cast their ballots did not do so because they thought their votes were meaningless in the aftermath of the calling of Florida for Gore, although the degree to which this influenced Bush's vote totals are unknown and debatable. During the numerous recounts , there were also allegations of both pro-Bush and pro-Gore tampering by low-level operatives in the controversial counties. It is unclear what effect, if any, this may have had. Both camps fought to keep overseas absentee votes out in counties thought to be favorable to the other candidate, arguing, for example, that votes in envelopes lacking cancellation marks could have been cast after the election. The counterargument was that, regardless of the law, many of the votes were cast by military personnel, and some could have been delayed due to emergency duty shifts by those overseas who chose to submit their ballots at the last hour.
As a matter of law, the issue was settled when the
U.S. Congress accepted Florida's electoral delegation, only after a challenge to the Florida electors was presented in the congressional chambers on January 6, 2001 by members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Member after member went up decrying the lack of a senator who would be willing to co-sponsor the challenge without any effect. They thus failed to bring the challenge to a debate.
Concern about the possible disenfranchisement of voters in the Florida vote 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 whose employees also count those votes.
Joe Lieberman later criticized Al Gore for adopting a populist theme during their 2000 campaign. Lieberman said he objected to Gore's "people vs. the powerful" message, believing it was not the best strategy for Democrats to use to retain the White House.
The popular political blog The Daily Howler contends that Gore lost the election due to a relentless media "war," in which his positions were misconstrued and his personal idiosyncrasies exaggerated or even invented altogether by members of the mainstream press corps. Singled out by The Daily Howler for particularly misleading accounts of Gore and his candidacy are Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post, Katherine "Kit" Seelye of the New York Times and television talk-show host Chris Matthews.
Before the 2000 election,
The Simpsons had an episode in which Al Gore is seen measuring the curtains in President Clinton's office.
While running for president in 2000, Al Gore was used as a voice actor for the television show
Futurama is an American [i] animated television series [i] that follows Philip J. Fry [i] ...
. He played
himself again in another episode after the campaign was over.
Private citizen
Education
Following his election loss, Gore accepted visiting
professorships at
Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism,
Middle Tennessee State University,
University of California, Los Angeles, and
Fisk University. In late 2001, Al Gore became a Senior Advisor to
Google and Vice Chairman of Los Angeles-based financial firm Metropolitan West Financial LLC.
Criticism of Bush Administration
On September 23, 2002, Gore spoke in
San Francisco to The Commonwealth Club and made a controversial speech blasting Bush on the timing of the Iraq war, although he admitted Saddam was a potential danger and suggested Saddam had WMD saying: "We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Gore also spoke against rushing to war with Iraq, advising caution and saying that Iraq was a diversion from fighting Al-Qaeda and terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere: "I don't think that we should allow anything to diminish our focus on avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists who we know to be responsible for it. The fact that we don't know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify."
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 Late Show with David Letterman and
Saturday Night Live , appearing much more relaxed and humorous as a private citizen than he did while holding public office.
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 issues, most notably
global warming. Gore also continued to visit campuses across the nation lecturing on issues such as
race,
media, and
democracy.
On April 10, 2004, Gore met with the
9/11 Commission in private to give his testimony on what the Clinton 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."
In the summer of 2004, Gore teamed up with
MoveOn.org, to promote the new science 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 public debate on the issue.
On April 27, 2005, Gore gave an hour-long speech lambasting the GOP's effort to do away with the legislative filibuster. In response to Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist, who for weeks had repeated threats to impose the "nuclear option" if Senate Democrats did not stop blocking judicial nominees via the filibuster, Gore said, "Their grand design is an all-powerful executive using a weakened
legislature to fashion a compliant judiciary in its own image. The Senate has confirmed 205 or over 95% of President Bush's nominees. Democrats have held up only 10 nominees, less than 5%. Compare that with the 60 Clinton nominees who were blocked by Republican obstruction between 1995 and 2000. What is involved here is a power grab." Gore also took aim at what he called "religious zealots" who claim special knowledge of
God's will in
American politics. He went on to say, "They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against people of faith. How dare they!" This was Gore's first major policy speech of 2005 and also the first one since the defeat of Democratic hopeful John Kerry in late 2004.
Civil Rights
On January 16, 2006, Al Gore delivered a speech criticizing President Bush's use of domestic wiretaps without a warrant. Gore stated that Bush broke the law and recommended that an independent counsel investigate the matter further.
On February 12, 2006, Gore contended the US government had committed ‘terrible abuses’ against Arabs living in America after the 9/11 attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.
"The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake,” Gore stated at the
Jeddah Economic Forum. “The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” He told the Saudi audience, many of them educated in US universities, that Arabs in the United States had been “indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.” “Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it’s wrong. I do want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country.”
Hurricane Katrina
In September 2005, Gore chartered two aircraft to evacuate 270 evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. He was highly critical of the government and federal response in the days after the hurricane.
Future plans
Speaking at an economic forum in
Stockholm,
Sweden, in October 2005, Gore again stated that he had no intention of ever running for president again, in response to questions from reporters. However, he refused to rule the possibility out completely saying, "I do not completely rule out some future interest, but I do not expect to have that." When asked how the United States would have been different if he had become president, Mr. Gore stated, "We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us. We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families. We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people."
In 2006, Gore purchased a luxury condo at San Francisco's St. Regis tower. This has created speculation that he may eventually run for political office in California.
Environment
In the past few years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards
global warming awareness and prevention. His on global warming has received standing ovations, and he has presented it at least 1000 times.
Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft. Gore and his family drive
hybrid vehicles.
Beginning in the fall of 2006, Al Gore and a team of renowned
climate change scientists and educators will train more than 1,000 individual volunteers to give a version of his presentation on the effects of – and solutions for --
global warming, to community groups throughout the U.S. The presentation and training program are based on the message Gore has been giving for more than two decades, which inspired the extraordinary documentary film and book,
An Inconvenient Truth.
An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore starred in the movie
An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film [i] about climate change [i], especially global warming [i]...
by
Paramount Pictures. The film had a limited release on May 24, 2006, in Los Angeles, New York, Berkeley, Campbell, and the AMC near San Jose, followed by a nationwide release a few days later. It is due to be released on
DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment on November 21, 2006. The movie is about
global warming, an issue which Gore has followed since the 1970s. In the
movie, some of Gore's more recent speeches are shown, as well as him talking and performing research. As of August 2006, it is the third-highest grossing
documentary in U.S. history. He has also published a
book of the same title.
Investment firm
In late 2004, Gore launched an investment firm, which he chairs, to seek out companies taking a responsible view on big global issues like
climate change.
Gore's group, Generation Investment Management, was created to assist the growing demand for an investment st
