This article is about the former Vice President of the United States. For his father, U.S. Senator from
Tennessee, see
Albert Gore, Sr. For his son, see
Al Gore
III.
Al Gore  |
Al Gore in 1994
|
|
In office
January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001 |
| President |
Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by |
Dan Quayle |
| Succeeded by |
Dick Cheney |
|
In office
January 3, 1985 – January
2, 1993 |
| Preceded by |
Howard Baker |
| Succeeded by |
Harlan Mathews |
|
In office
January 3, 1983 – January
3, 1985 |
| Preceded by |
Robin Beard |
| Succeeded by |
Bart Gordon |
|
In office
January 3, 1977 – January
3, 1983 |
| Preceded by |
Joe L. Evins |
| Succeeded by |
Jim Cooper |
|
| Born |
March 31 1948 (1948--) (age 59)
Washington, D.C. |
| Political party |
Democratic |
| Spouse |
Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" A. Gore |
| Alma mater |
Harvard University, Vanderbilt
University |
| Religion |
Baptist (formerly Southern
Baptist) |
| Website |
algore.com |
2007 Nobel Peace Laureate Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born
March 31, 1948) was the forty-fifth vice president of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001 under
President Bill Clinton. Before
that, Vice President Gore served in the U. S. House of
Representatives (1977–85) and the U. S. Senate (1985–93), representing
Tennessee. A prominent environmental
activist, he shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "for their
efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures
that are needed to counteract such change."
Gore was the Democratic nominee for president in the
2000 election in which he won the popular vote by a
plurality. A legal controversy over the Florida
election recount, ultimately settled in favor of George W. Bush by the
Supreme Court, made the election one of the most controversial in American history.[1] [2]
Today, Gore is president of the American television channel Current TV (which won the
award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television at the 2007 Primetime
Emmys[3]), chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., an unofficial advisor to Google's senior management, and chairman
of the Alliance for Climate Protection.
As an environmental activist, Gore lectures widely on the topic of global warming,
which he calls "the climate crisis."[4] In 2006, he starred
in the Academy Award-winning documentary film,
An Inconvenient Truth, discussing global warming and the environment. Under
his leadership, one of Gore's organizations, Save Our Selves, organized the
July 7, 2007 benefit
concert Live Earth in an effort to raise awareness about climate change.
While Gore has frequently stated that "I'm not planning to be a candidate again,"[5] there are continuing efforts[6] to convince him to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
Early life
Albert A. Gore, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., to Albert Arnold Gore, Sr., a U.S. Representative (1939–1944, 1945–1953) and Senator (1953–1971) from
Tennessee and Pauline LaFon Gore, one of the first
women to graduate from Vanderbilt University Law School. He divided his
childhood between Washington, and Carthage, Tennessee:[7] as a boy, during the school year, the family lived in a hotel in Washington and
during summer vacations, Gore worked on the family farm in Carthage, where hay and tobacco were grown and cattle raised.[8]
Gore attended St. Albans School where he ranked 25th (of 51) in
his senior class.[9] In preparation for
his college applications, Gore scored a 1355 on his SAT (625 in verbal and 730 in math). [9] Al Gore's IQ scores, from
tests administered at St. Alban's School in 1961 and 1964 (his freshman and senior years) respectively, have been recorded as 133
and 134. [9]
In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, the only university to which he applied.
He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row[10] and, after finding himself bored with his classes in his declared English major, Gore switched
majors and found a passion for government and graduated with honors from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in
government. [9] 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 to run for an open seat in Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District in
1976.
Gore served as a field reporter in Vietnam for five months.
Gore opposed the Vietnam War and could have avoided serving overseas by accepting a spot
in the National Guard that a friend of his family had reserved for him, or by other means of avoiding the draft. Gore has stated
that his sense of civic duty compelled him to serve in some capacity.[11] He enlisted in the United States Army on
August 7, 1969. 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, Gore was shipped to
Vietnam, arriving on 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.
Gore said 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."[12]
As his unit was standing down, he applied for and received a non-essential personnel honorable discharge two months early in
order to attend divinity school at Vanderbilt University.[13] Gore left Vanderbilt after completing the required one-year Rockefeller
Foundation scholarship for students returning to secular work.[14] In 1970, Gore married Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson
(known as Tipper), whom he had first met at his high school senior prom in Washington, D.C.
Gore then spent five years as a reporter for The
Tennessean, a newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee. His investigations of
possible corruption among members of Nashville's Metro Council resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two councilmen for
separate offenses.[15] Gore then took a leave of absence
from the paper to try law school. Before he could finish, he learned that his local congressman planned to retire in
1976.[citation needed]
Political career (1976–2000)
Congressional service
When Congressman Joe L. Evins announced his retirement after 30 years, Gore quit law
school in March 1976 to run for the United States House of
Representatives, 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 United States 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 (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; and Rules and Administration.
On March 19, 1979, Gore became the first person to appear on
C-SPAN, making a speech in the House chambers.[16] In the late 1980s, Gore introduced the Gore Bill, which was
later passed as the High Performance Computing and
Communication Act of 1991. The bill was one of the most important pieces of legislation directly affecting the expansion
of the Internet.
Opposition to U.S. government support of Saddam Hussein
While Senator, Gore twice attempted to get the U.S. government to pull the plug on support to Saddam Hussein, citing Hussein's
use of poison gas, support of terrorism, and his burgeoning nuclear program, but was opposed both times by the Reagan and Bush
administrations. In the wake of the Al-Anfal Campaign, during which Hussein staged
deadly mustard and nerve gas attacks on Kurdish Iraqis, Gore cosponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, which would have cut all assistance to Iraq. The
bill was defeated in part due to intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House and a veto threat from President
Reagan.[17] Gore's positions as a Senator with regard to
Iraq would later become an issue in his 1992 campaign for Vice President.[18]
1988 Presidential election
-
Gore ran for President in the 1988 United States presidential
election, 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.[16]
On April 3, 1989, Gore's six-year-old son Albert was nearly
killed in an automobile accident while leaving the Baltimore Orioles' opening day
game. Because of the resulting lengthy healing process, his father chose to stay near him during the recovery instead of laying
the foundation for a 1992 presidential primary campaign. Gore started writing Earth in
the Balance, his book on environmental conservation, during his son's recovery. It became the first book written by a
sitting Senator to make The New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.
Vice Presidency
Vice President Gore talking with President Clinton as the two pass through the Colonnade at the White House.
Bill Clinton chose Gore to be his running mate for the 1992 United States presidential election on July
9, 1992. 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.
According to the U.S. government, the U.S. economy expanded for all eight years of the Clinton/Gore administration.[19] One factor was 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. One of Gore's major works as Vice
President was the National Performance Review,[20]
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. Gore stated that the National Performance Review
later helped guide President Clinton when he down-sized the federal
government.[21]
In 1993, Gore debated Ross Perot on CNN's Larry King Live on the issue of free trade, with Gore arguing for
free trade and the passage of NAFTA, and Perot arguing against it.
Public opinion polls taken after the debate showed that a majority of Americans thought Gore won the debate and now supported
NAFTA[22]. The bill subsequently passed 234–200 in the
House of Representatives.[23]
Gore while Vice President
In 1997, Gore became the highest elected official to have run a marathon while in office. He
ran the 1997 Marine Corps Marathon in 4:54:25 (an 11:14 mile pace).[24]
In 1998, Gore began promoting a NASA satellite that would
provide a constant view of Earth, marking the first time such an image would have
been made since The Blue Marble photo from the 1972 Apollo
17 mission. The "Triana" satellite would have been permanently
mounted in the L1 Lagrangian Point, 1.5 million km away.[25]
Also in 1998, Gore became associated with Digital Earth.[26]
In 1999, Gore became the subject of criticism by AIDS activists. According to a June 18 1999 article in the Washington
Post the activists said that "Gore, in talks with South African President
Thabo Mbeki, has threatened trade sanctions if South Africa permits the widespread sale of
cheaper, generic drugs that would cut into U.S. companies' sales." Gore responded by stating, "I love this country. I love the
First Amendment [...] Let me say in response to those who may have chosen an inappropriate way to make their point, that actually
the crisis of AIDS in Africa is one that should command the attention of people in the United States and around the world."
[27]
2000 Presidential election
-
Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign logo
After two terms as Vice President, Gore ran for President again in the 2000 United States Presidential election, selecting Senator Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate. The election was one of the closest and most
controversial presidential elections in the history of the United States.
Gore's daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, worked on her father's campaign during the
election as Youth Outreach Chair.[28] Together
with her father's former Harvard roommate Tommy Lee
Jones, [29] Schiff officially nominated Gore as
the presidential candidate during the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. [30] She also introduced her father during the launching of his campaign.[31]
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,
and then called Florida for Bush, before finally retracting that projection as well.
The race was ultimately decided by a margin of only 537 votes in Florida. Florida's 25 electoral votes were awarded to Bush
only after numerous court challenges. Gore publicly conceded the election after the Supreme Court of the United States in Bush v.
Gore ruled that the Florida recount was unconstitutional and that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed
by the December 12 deadline, effectively ending the recounts.[32] Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but decided "for the sake of our unity as a
people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."[33]
Gore became the fourth candidate in American history to win the popular vote (by half a
million more votes than his opponent) but lose the electoral vote.[34] Gore ultimately received 267 electoral votes to Bush's 271.[35]
Running mate Joe Lieberman later criticized Gore for adopting a populist theme during their
2000 campaign, and stated he had objected to Gore's "people vs. the powerful" message, believing it was not the best strategy for
Democrats to use to win the election.[36]
In the introduction to his global warming presentation, Gore has jokingly introduced
himself as "the former next President of the United States".
During his 2000 campaign for the presidency, Gore himself attributed positive economic results to his and Clinton's
policies[37] — more than 22 million new jobs, the highest
homeownership in American history (up to that time), 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.[38]
Post Vice-presidency
2004 election activities
As the first major speaker at the 2004 Democratic National
Convention, Gore presented himself as a living reminder that every vote counts. "Let's make sure not only that the Supreme
Court does not pick the next president, but also that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court," said Gore.
Gore directed remarks to those who had abandoned the Democratic Party four years ago to support third-party presidential
candidate Ralph Nader, asking them, "Do you still believe that there was no difference
between the candidates?"[39]
Initially, Al Gore was touted as a logical opponent of George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election. "Re-elect Gore!" was a common slogan among many
Democrats who felt he had been cheated out of the presidency, on the grounds of his winning the popular vote and the Florida
voting controversies. 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 for the presidency, which he had vowed he would not do
if Gore ran.
Despite Gore taking himself out of the race, a handful of his supporters formed a national campaign to "draft" him into running. However, that effort largely came to an end when Gore publicly endorsed
Governor of Vermont Howard Dean (over his
former running mate Lieberman) weeks before the first primary of the election cycle. There was still some effort to encourage
write-in votes for Gore in the primaries by Patriots for Al Gore who were separate
from the draft movement. Although Gore did receive a small number of votes in New Hampshire and New Mexico, that effort was
halted when John Kerry pulled into the lead for the nomination.
On February 9, 2004, on the eve of the Tennessee primary, Gore gave what some consider his harshest criticism of the president yet when he accused
George W. Bush of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for
the invasion of Iraq. 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 Kerry as the presumptive
Democratic nominee.
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 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 Supreme Court halting the counting of the ballots, a total of $240,000, will be donated to the Florida Democratic Party. Gore
stressed the importance of voting and having every vote counted, foreshadowing the 2004 United States election voting controversies.
2008 Presidential election plans
Gore has not stated that he will participate as a candidate in the 2008 presidential election. However, as he has not rejected the possibility
outright, the prospect of a Gore candidacy remains a topic of public speculation. Some of Gore's supporters have publicly
encouraged him to join the race. An April 2007 Quinnipiac University poll of 504 registered Democrats in New Jersey showed Gore
receiving 12% of the votes in a hypothetical Democratic primary, in third place behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.[40]
Gore and his family have commented on whether Gore will run in the 2008 presidential election. In December 2006, Gore stated
on NBC's Today: "I am not planning to run for president again [...] I haven't
completely ruled it out."[41] His son, Albert Gore III,
followed with a comment in a December 14, 2006 article: "I
know that [my father] has no plans to run in 2008 [...] Well, I guess I have to add his addendum. I think the way he always says
it is, "I don't see any circumstances under which I would run for president.""[42]
The release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 increased Gore's popularity among progressives.[43][44]
Gore received 68% of support among "fantasy" potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidates in a May 2006 straw poll of
visitors to Daily Kos[45] and 35% in a July 13, 2006 survey of
AlterNet readers.[46] A
Gallup poll of August 2006 shows that nearly half of Americans viewed Gore favorably (48
percent to 45 percent).[47] A CNN telephone poll
conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation of registered or independent
leaning Democrats in November 2006 had Gore with 14% support in a theoretical multi-candidate Democratic primary election.[citation needed]
Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign chairwoman from the 2000 campaign made cryptic comments during a speech on January 31, 2007, at Moravian College
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania stating, "Wait till Oscar night, I tell people: 'I'm dating. I haven't fallen in love yet. On Oscar night, if Al Gore has
slimmed down 25 or 30 pounds, Lord knows.'"[48] The
meaning of these remarks became clearer when on award night, while in attendance and acting as a presenter for an award, Gore
began a speech that seemed to be leading up to an announcement that he would run for president. However, background music drowned
him out and he was escorted offstage, implying it was a rehearsed gag.[49]
Others have expressed an interest in seeing Gore run in 2008. According to the February 6,
2007 issue of The Santa Barbara Independent, when Gore received The Sir David
Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Filmmaking at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 2,
director James Cameron (who presented him with the award) stated: "[I] beseech Mr. Gore to
step up to the plate one more time!"[50] Furthermore, the
February 8, 2007 edition of The Washington Post notes in the article Supporters Push Gore to Run in 2008, "Veterans
of Al Gore's past are quietly assembling a campaign to draft the former vice president into the 2008 presidential race — despite
his repeated statements that he's not running [...] In 2002, Gore asked [Dylan] Malone, to stop a draft effort he had begun;
Malone did. Malone started up again and, so far, Gore hasn't waved him off."[51]
The question of whether or not Gore will run was the cover story of the May 28,
2007 issue of TIME magazine, The Last Temptation of Al
Gore.[52]
A 29 June 2007 article in the The Guardian cited a poll conducted "in New Hampshire by 7News and Suffolk University" that found that if Gore "were to seek the Democratic nomination, 29% of
Mrs. Clinton's backers would switch their support to him [...] when defections
from other candidates are factored in, the man who controversially lost to Mr. Bush in
the 2000 election takes command of the field, with 32% support."[53]
Education
Gore has been involved in education on a number of levels. He taught at four universities in 2001 as a visiting professor
(Columbia University Graduate School of
Journalism,[54] Fisk University[55]
Middle Tennessee State University,[56] and UCLA.[57])
He was also elected an honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences in April 2007. He will be inducted in a ceremony in October 2007 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [58] Finally, Concordia University awarded Gore an honorary doctorate on March 22 during the Youth Action Montreal's Youth Summit on Climate Change in Quebec, Canada.[59]
Private citizen
On September 23, 2002, in a speech before the
Commonwealth Club, Gore gave what many consider to be one of the strongest speeches by
any public figure criticizing President George W. Bush and Congress for their rush to war prior to the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq.[60] In it, Gore warned of the great
expense the war was sure to incur, the risk to America's reputation in the world, and the questionable legality of the
Bush Doctrine of preemptive war.[61]
In September 2005, Gore chartered two aircraft to evacuate 270 evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.[62] He was
highly critical of the government and federal response in the days after the hurricane.
Gore's 2007 book, The Assault on Reason, is an analysis of what he calls
the "emptying out of the marketplace of ideas" in civic discourse, which, according
to Gore, is due to the influence of electronic media, especially television, and which endangers American democracy; but he also expresses the belief that the
Internet can revitalize and ultimately "redeem the integrity of representative
democracy."[63]
Promoting environmental awareness
According to a February 27, 2007 article in The
Concord Monitor, "Gore was one of the first politicians to grasp the seriousness of
climate change and to call for a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. He held the first
congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s."[64] During his tenure in Congress, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978–79, and hearings
on global warming in the 1980s.[65] On 14 May 1989 while still a Senator, Gore published an editorial in the
Washington Post which argued that, "Humankind has suddenly entered into a
brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone
layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate." [66]
On Earth Day 1994, Gore launched the GLOBE program,
an education and science activity that, according to Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of
the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment".[67]
In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which
called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.[68][69] He was opposed by the
Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0) the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[70] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any
protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in
serious harm to the economy of the United States".[71] On
November 12 1998, Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both
Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in
the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[72] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.
In recent years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards
global warming awareness and prevention. His keynote presentation on global warming has
received standing ovations, and he has presented it at least 1,000 times according to his monologue in An Inconvenient
Truth. His speaking fee is $100,000.[73]
In 2004, he launched Generation Investment Management. This firm,
which he chairs, seeks out companies which take a responsible view on global issues such as climate change. It was created to assist the growing demand for an investment style that can bring
returns by blending traditional equity research with a foc
