Vice Presidency of Al Gore
Encyclopedia
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
was Vice President of the United States
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
from 1993 to 2001, during the presidential administration of Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
.
Overview
Although Gore had opted out of running for president (due to the healing process his son was undergoing after a car accident), he accepted the request of Bill ClintonBill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
to serve as his running mate for the 1992 United States presidential election
United States presidential election, 1992
The United States presidential election of 1992 had three major candidates: Incumbent Republican President George Bush; Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and independent Texas businessman Ross Perot....
on July 10, 1992. Clinton's choice was perceived as unconventional (as rather than pick a running mate who would diversify the ticket, Clinton chose a fellow Southerner who was close in age) and was criticized by some. Clinton stated that he chose Gore for his foreign policy experience, work with the environment, and commitment to his family. Known as the Baby Boomer
Baby boomer
A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even...
Ticket and the Fortysomething Team, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
noted that if elected, Clinton (who was 45) Gore (who was 44) would be the "youngest team to make it to the White House in the country's history." Theirs was the first ticket since 1972 to try to capture the youth vote, a ticket which Gore referred to as "a new generation of leadership."
The ticket increased in popularity after the candidates traveled with their wives, Hillary and Tipper, on a "six-day, 1,000-mile bus ride, from New York to St. Louis." Gore also successfully debated against the other vice presidential candidates, Dan Quayle
Dan Quayle
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle served as the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving with President George H. W. Bush . He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from the state of Indiana....
(a longtime colleague from the House and the Senate) and James Stockdale
James Stockdale
Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale was one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the United States Navy.Stockdale led aerial attacks from the carrier during the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident...
. The result of the campaign was a win by the Clinton-Gore ticket (43%) over the Bush-Quayle ticket (38%). Clinton and Gore were inaugurated on January 20, 1993 and were re-elected to a second term in the 1996 election
United States presidential election, 1996
The United States presidential election of 1996 was a contest between the Democratic national ticket of President Bill Clinton of Arkansas and Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee and the Republican national ticket of former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas for President and former Housing Secretary Jack...
.
Economy and information technology
Under the Clinton Administration, the U.S. economy expanded, according to David Greenberg (professor of history and media studies at Rutgers UniversityRutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
) who argued that "by the end of the Clinton presidency, the numbers were uniformly impressive. Besides the record-high surpluses and the record-low poverty rates, the economy could boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged." In addition, one of Gore's major works 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
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
and the number of regulations. Gore stated that the National Performance Review later helped guide President Clinton when he down-sized the federal government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
.
The economic success of this administration was due in part to Gore's continued role as an Atari Democrat
Atari Democrat
Atari Democrat, a phrase first popularized during the early 1980s, references both the video game brand Atari and Democratic legislators who suggested that the support and development of high tech and related businesses would stimulate the economy and create jobs.-Definition:The definition of an...
, promoting the development of information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
, which led to the dot-com boom
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
(c. 1995-2001). Clinton and Gore entered office planning to finance research that would "flood the economy with innovative goods and services, lifting the general level of prosperity and strengthening American industry." Their overall aim was to fund the development of, "robotics, smart roads, biotechnology, machine tools, magnetic-levitation trains, fiber-optic communications and national computer networks. Also earmarked [were] a raft of basic technologies like digital imaging and data storage." These initiatives met with skepticism from critics who claimed that their initiatives would "backfire, bloating Congressional pork and creating whole new categories of Federal waste."
During the election and while Vice President, Gore popularized the term Information Superhighway
Information superhighway
The information superhighway or infobahnwas a popular term used through the 1990s to refer to digital communication systems and the Internet telecommunications network. It is associated with United States Senator and later Vice-President Al Gore....
(which became synonymous with the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
) and was involved in the creation of the National Information Infrastructure
National Information Infrastructure
The National Information Infrastructure was the product of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. It was a telecommunications policy buzzword, which was popularized during the Clinton Administration under the leadership of Vice-President Al Gore...
.
The economic initiatives introduced by the Clinton-Gore administration linked to information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
were a primary focus for Gore during his time as Vice President. Gary Stix commented on these initiatives a few months prior in his May 1993 article for Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
, "Gigabit Gestalt: Clinton and Gore embrace an activist technology policy." Stix described them as a "distinct statement about where the new administration stands on the matter of technology [...] gone is the ambivalence or outright hostility toward government involvement in little beyond basic science." Campbell-Kelly and Aspray further note in Computer: A History of the Information Machine:
- In the early 1990s the Internet was big news.... In the fall of 1990 there were just 313,000 computers on the Internet; by 1996, there were close to 10 million. The networking idea became politicized during the 1992 Clinton-Gore election campaign, where the rhetoric of the Information Superhighway|information highway captured the public imagination. On taking office in 1993, the new administration set in place a range of government initiatives for a National Information Infrastructure aimed at ensuring that all American citizens ultimately gain access to the new networks.
These initiatives were discussed in a number of venues. Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold
-See also:* Collective intelligence* Information society* The WELL* Virtual community-External links:***** at TED conference** a 48MB Quicktime movie, hosted by the Internet Archive...
argued in The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, that these initiatives played a critical role in the development of digital technology, stating that, "Two powerful forces drove the rapid emergence of the superhighway notion in 1994 [...] the second driving force behind the superhighway idea continued to be Vice-President Gore." In addition, Clinton and Gore submitted the report, Science in the National Interest in 1994, which further outlined their plans to develop science and technology in the United States. Gore also discussed these plans in speeches that he made at The Superhighway Summit
The Superhighway Summit
The Superhighway Summit was held at UCLA's Royce Hall on 11 January 1994. It was the "first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the Information Superhighway and its implications." ...
at UCLA and for the International Telecommunications Union.
On January 13, 1994 Gore "became the first U.S. vice president to hold a live interactive news conference on an international computer network". Gore was also asked to write the foreword to the 1994 internet guide, The Internet Companion: A Beginner’s Guide to Global Networking (2nd edition) by Tracy LaQuey. In the foreword he stated the following:
- Since I first became interested in high-speed networking almost seventeen years ago, there have been many major advances both in the technology and in public awareness. Articles on high-speed networks are commonplace in major newspapers and in news magazines. In contrast, when as a House member in the early 1980's, I called for creation of a national network of "information superhighways," the only people interested were the manufacturers of optical fiber. Back then, of course, high-speed meant 56,000 bits per second. Today we are building a national information infrastructure that will carry billions of bits of data per second, serve thousands of users simultaneously, and transmit not only electronic mail and data files but voice and video as well.
The Clinton-Gore administration launched the first official White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
website on October 21, 1994. It would be followed by three more versions, resulting in the final edition launched in 2000. The White House website was part of a general movement by this administration towards web based communication: "Clinton and Gore were responsible for pressing almost all federal agencies, the U.S. court system and the U.S. military onto the Internet, thus opening up America's government to more of America's citizens than ever before. On July 17, 1996. President Clinton issued Executive Order 13011 - Federal Information Technology, ordering the heads of all federal agencies to fully utilize information technology to make the information of the agency easily accessible to the public."
Clipper Chip
The Clipper ChipClipper chip
The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the U.S. National Security Agency as an encryption device to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission...
, which "Clinton inherited from a multi-year National Security Agency effort," was a method of hardware encryption with a government backdoor. In 1994, Vice President Gore issued a memo on the topic of encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
which stated that under a new policy the White House would "provide better encryption to individuals and businesses while ensuring that the needs of law enforcement and national security are met. Encryption is a law and order issue since it can be used by criminals to thwart wiretaps and avoid detection and prosecution."
Another initiative proposed a software-based key escrow
Key escrow
Key escrow is an arrangement in which the keys needed to decrypt encrypted data are held in escrow so that, under certain circumstances, an authorized third party may gain access to those keys...
system, in which keys to all encrypted data and communications would reside with a trusted third party
Trusted third party
In cryptography, a trusted third party is an entity which facilitates interactions between two parties who both trust the third party; The Third Party reviews all critical transaction communications between the parties, based on the ease of creating fraudulent digital content. In TTP models, the...
. Since the government was seen as possibly having a need to access encrypted data originating in other countries, the pressure to establish such a system was worldwide.
These policies met with strong opposition from civil liberty groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
and the Electronic Privacy Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research group in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values in the information age...
, scientific groups such as the National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
, leading cryptographers
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
, and the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
. All three Clipper Chip initiatives thus failed to gain widespread acceptance by consumers or support from the industry. The ability of a proposal such as the Clipper Chip to meet the stated goals, especially that of enabling better encryption to individuals, was disputed by a number of experts.
By 1996, the Clipper Chip was abandoned.
Additional projects
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, stating:
Gore had a chance to fulfill this promise when he and President Clinton participated in John Gage
John Gage
John Burdette Gage was the 21st employee of Sun Microsystems, where he is credited with creating the phrase "the network is the computer." He served as Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun, until leaving on June 9, 2008 to join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a...
's NetDay
NetDay
NetDay was an event established in 1995 that "called on high-tech companies to commit resources to schools, libraries, and clinics worldwide so that they could connect to the Internet". It was developed by John Gage and activist Michael Kaufman...
'96 on March 9, 1996. Clinton and Gore spent the day at Ygnacio Valley High School
Ygnacio Valley High School
Ygnacio Valley High School is a public secondary school located in Concord, California. It draws students from Concord as well as from the neighboring communities of Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill. The school opened in 1962, and its first senior class graduated in 1964...
, as part of the drive to connect California public schools to the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. In a speech given at YVH, Clinton stated that he was excited to see that his challenge the previous September to "Californians to connect at least 20 percent of your schools to the Information Superhighway
Information superhighway
The information superhighway or infobahnwas a popular term used through the 1990s to refer to digital communication systems and the Internet telecommunications network. It is associated with United States Senator and later Vice-President Al Gore....
by the end of this school year" was met. Clinton also described this event as part of a time of "absolutely astonishing transformation; a moment of great possibility. All of you know that the information and technology explosion will offer to you and to the young people of the future more opportunities and challenges than any generation of Americans has ever seen." In a prepared statement, Gore added that NetDay was part of one of the major goals of the Clinton administration, which was "to give every child in America access to high quality educational technology by the dawn of the new century." Gore also stated that the administration planned "to connect every classroom to the Internet by the year 2000." On April 28, 1998, Gore honored numerous volunteers who had been involved with NetDay and "who helped connect students to the Internet in 700 of the poorest schools in the country" via "an interactive online session with children across the country."
He also reinforced the impact of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
on the environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
, education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, and increased communication between people through his involvement with "the largest one-day online event" for that time, 24 Hours in Cyberspace
24 Hours in Cyberspace
24 Hours in Cyberspace was "the largest one-day online event" up to that date, headed by photographer Rick Smolan. "The project brought together the world's top photographers, editors, programmers, and interactive designers to create a digital time capsule of online life."-Overview:24 Hours in...
. The event took place on February 8, 1996 and Second Lady
Second Lady
A Second Lady is a title sometimes used in reference to the wife of a vice president or a lieutenant governor, styled relative to the title of First Lady, the wife of a president or governor...
Tipper Gore
Tipper Gore
Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore , née Aitcheson, is an author, photographer, former second lady of the United States, and the estranged wife of Al Gore...
also participated, acting as one of the event's 150 photographers. Gore contributed the introductory essay to the Earthwatch section of the website, arguing that:
Gore was involved in a number of other projects related to digital technology. He expressed his concerns for online privacy through his 1998 "Electronic Bill of Rights" speech in which he stated: "We need an electronic bill of rights for this electronic age [...] You should have the right to choose whether your personal information is disclosed." He also began promoting a NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
that would provide a constant view of Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, marking the first time such an image would have been made since The Blue Marble
The Blue Marble
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about ....
photo from the 1972 Apollo 17
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final manned mission in the American Apollo space program. Launched at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, with a three-member crew consisting of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 remains the...
mission. The "Triana" satellite
Triana (satellite)
Deep Space Climate Observatory is a NASA satellite proposed in 1998 by then-Vice President Al Gore for the purpose of Earth observation. It is intended to be positioned at the Earth's Lagrangian point, at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers...
would have been permanently mounted in the L1 Lagrangian Point
Lagrangian point
The Lagrangian points are the five positions in an orbital configuration where a small object affected only by gravity can theoretically be stationary relative to two larger objects...
, 1.5 million km away. Gore also became associated with Digital Earth
Digital Earth
Digital Earth is the name given to a concept by former US vice president Al Gore in 1998, describing a virtual representation of the Earth that is spatially referenced and interconnected with the world’s digital knowledge archives.-Original Vision:...
.
Environment
Gore was also involved in a number of initiatives related to the environment. He launched the GLOBE programGLOBE Program
The GLOBE Program is a worldwide hands-on, primary- and secondary-school-based science and education program focusing on the environment, now active in 111 countries world-wide. It works to promote the teaching and learning of science, enhance environmental literacy and stewardship, and promote...
on Earth Day
Earth Day
Earth Day is a day that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. The first Proclamation of Earth Day was by San Francisco, the...
94, an education and science activity that, according to Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment". During the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , aimed at fighting global warming...
, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Gore was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0) the Byrd–Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98). In 1998, Gore began promoting a NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
that would provide a constant view of Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, marking the first time such an image would have been made since The Blue Marble
The Blue Marble
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about ....
photo from the 1972 Apollo 17
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final manned mission in the American Apollo space program. Launched at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, with a three-member crew consisting of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 remains the...
mission. During this time, he also became associated with Digital Earth
Digital Earth
Digital Earth is the name given to a concept by former US vice president Al Gore in 1998, describing a virtual representation of the Earth that is spatially referenced and interconnected with the world’s digital knowledge archives.-Original Vision:...
.
Fund-raising
In 1996 Gore was criticized for attending an event at the Buddhist Hsi Lai TempleHsi Lai Temple
Fo Guang Shan Hsi Lai Temple is a traditional Chinese Buddhist mountain monastery in the United States. It is located on the foothill region of Hacienda Heights, California, USA, a suburb of Los Angeles County...
in Hacienda Heights, California
Hacienda Heights, California
Hacienda Heights is an unincorporated census-designated place in and below the Puente Hills of the San Gabriel Valley, in Los Angeles County, California, United States...
. In an interview on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's Today the following year, he stated that, "I did not know that it was a fund-raiser. I knew it was a political event, and I knew there were finance people that were going to be present, and so that alone should have told me, 'This is inappropriate and this is a mistake; don't do this.' And I take responsibility for that. It was a mistake."
The temple was later implicated in a campaign donation laundering
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
scheme. In that scheme, donations nominally from Buddhist nuns in lawful amounts had actually been donated by wealthy monastics
Monasticism
Monasticism is a religious way of life characterized by the practice of renouncing worldly pursuits to fully devote one's self to spiritual work...
and devotees.
Robert Conrad, Jr., then head of a Justice Department task force appointed by Attorney General
United States Attorney General
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government...
Janet Reno
Janet Reno
Janet Wood Reno is a former Attorney General of the United States . She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11...
to investigate the fund-raising controversies, called on Reno in Spring 2000 to appoint an independent counsel to look into the fund-raising practices of Vice President Gore. Reno on 3 September 1997, ordered a review of Gore's fund-raising and associated statements. Based on the investigation, she judged that appointment of an independent counsel was unwarranted.
Later in 1997, Gore also had to explain certain fund-raising calls he made to solicit funds for the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
for the 1996 election. In a news conference, Gore responded that, "all calls that I made were charged to the Democratic National Committee. I was advised there was nothing wrong with that. My counsel tells me there is no controlling legal authority that says that is any violation of any law." The phrase "no controlling legal authority" was severely criticized by some commentators, such as Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer, MD is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His weekly column appears in The Washington Post and is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets. He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New...
, who wrote that "Whatever other legacies Al Gore leaves behind between now and retirement, he forever bequeaths this newest weasel word to the lexicon of American political corruption." On the other hand, Robert L. Weinberg argued in The Nation in 2000 that Gore actually had the U.S. Constitution in his favor on this, although he did concede that Gore's "use of the phrase was judged by many commentators to have been a political mistake of the first order" and noted that it was used often in stump speeches by George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
when Bush was campaigning against Gore in that year's presidential race.
Impeachment and impact
Soon afterwards, Gore contended with the Lewinsky scandalLewinsky scandal
The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging in 1998 from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 25-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of...
, involving an affair between President Clinton and an intern, Monica Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky is an American woman with whom United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996...
. Gore initially defended Clinton, whom he believed to be innocent, stating, "He is the president of the country! He is my friend [...] I want to ask you now, every single one of you, to join me in supporting him." After Clinton was impeached
Impeachment of Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton, President of the United States, was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on December 19, 1998, but acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. Two other impeachment articles, a second perjury charge and a charge of abuse of...
Gore continued to defend him stating, "I've defined my job in exactly the same way for six years now [...] to do everything I can to help him be the best president possible." However, by the beginning stages of the 2000 Presidential election
United States presidential election, 2000
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush , and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President....
, Gore gradually distanced himself from Clinton. Clinton was not a part of Gore's campaign, a move also signaled by the choice of Joe Lieberman
Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore "Joe" Lieberman is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.Born in Stamford, Connecticut,...
as a running mate, as Lieberman had been highly critical of Clinton's conduct.