Everything about Al Gore totally explained
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. Gore also served in the
U. S. House of Representatives (1977–85) and the
U. S. Senate (1985–93), representing
Tennessee. Gore was the
Democratic nominee for president in the
2000 election, in which he won the popular vote but ultimately lost to Republican candidate
George W. Bush. A legal controversy over the
Florida election recount was eventually settled in favor of Bush by the
Supreme Court.
A prominent
environmental activist, Gore was awarded the 2007
Nobel Peace Prize (together with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for the "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." He also starred in the
Academy Award-winning documentary on the topic of global warming,
An Inconvenient Truth. In 2007, Gore helped to organize the
July 7 benefit concert for global warming,
Live Earth.
Gore is currently chairman of the
Emmy Award - winning American television channel
Current TV, chairman of
Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of
Apple Inc., an unofficial advisor to
Google's senior management, chairman of the
Alliance for Climate Protection, and a partner in the
venture capital firm,
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, heading that firm's climate change solutions group.
Background
Albert Gore, Jr. was born in
Washington, D.C., to
Albert 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 as a boy. During the school year, the family lived in a hotel in Washington but during summer vacations Gore worked on the family farm in Carthage, where the Gores grew hay and tobacco and raised cattle. He had an elder sister, Nancy Gore Hunger, who died of
lung cancer in 1984.
Gore was an honors student at
St. Albans School in
Washington, D.C. He attended
Harvard University and graduated with a B.A. in government (
cum laude) in June 1969.
Gore's senior thesis at
Harvard explored the impact of television on the conduct of the presidency. This thesis essentially stated that television had an inherent bias towards individuals over institutions which would bring more attention to the president than the other branches of governments. The thesis furthermore argued that the ability to communicate well visually was becoming crucial to governing.
In 1970, Gore married
Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson (known as Tipper), whom he'd first met "at a party the night of his [highschool] graduation."
Kristin (born 1977), married to Paul Cusack; Sarah (born
January 7,
1979), married to
Taiwanese-American businessman Bill Lee, (李君偉); and Albert III (born 1982). Al and Tipper have two grandchildren: Wyatt Gore Schiff (born 1999) and Anna Hunger Schiff (born 2001).
Vietnam war
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. 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.
Gore said in 1988 that his experience in Vietnam:
Journalism and graduate study
Gore's father would later recall that, "the war, combined with his own campaign defeat and the Watergate scandals, turned his son temporarily against a political career." He attended the program from 1971–1972 and his goal was to explore "the spiritual issues that were most important to me at the time." He also worked part time as a reporter for
The Tennessean, a newspaper in
Nashville, Tennessee on the night shift. After completing the one year Rockefeller Foundation scholarship, he left the divinity school to focus on journalism full time. A few years later, he studied law at Vanderbilt. He attended law school from 1974–76 but "took away no degrees, deciding abruptly in 1976 to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives." Gore decided to quit law school and run for the
United States House of Representatives:
» Gore's abrupt decision to run for the open seat surprised even himself. 'I didn't realize myself I'd been pulled back so much to it,' he later commented. The news came as a 'bombshell' to his wife. Tipper Gore held a job in the
Tennessean's photo lab and was working on a master's degree in psychology, but she joined in her husband's campaign (with assurance that she could get her job at the
Tennessean back if he lost). By contrast, Gore asked his father to stay out of his campaign. 'I must become my own man,' he explained. 'I must not be your candidate.'
Gore "narrowly won" the Democratic primary, then ran unopposed in the general election and was elected to his first
Congressional post at the age of twenty-eight.
On
March 19 1979, Gore became the first person to appear on
C-SPAN, making a speech in the House chambers.
In the late 1980s, Gore introduced the
Gore Bill, which was later passed as the
High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991.
Leonard Kleinrock, a key player in the development of the
ARPANET, considers the act to be a critical moment in Internet history.
Gore clarified his positions as a senator with regard to the
Gulf War (particularly the events before and after it) during a speech he gave in 1992. In this speech, he stated that while a senator, he 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. On
Super Tuesday he won Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Nevada, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Gore eventually dropped out of the democratic race which went to
Michael Dukakis. Gore accepted the position after previously choosing not to run for President. On
April 3,
1989, his 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, Gore chose to stay near him during the recovery instead of laying the foundation for a 1992 presidential primary campaign (it was during this time period that he wrote
Earth in the Balance). In addition, during the Clinton-Gore administration, the U.S. economy expanded according to David Greenberg (professor of history and media studies at
Rutgers University) 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 1996 Gore was criticized for attending an event at the
Buddhist Hsi Lai Temple in
Hacienda Heights, California. In an interview on
NBC's
Today the following year, he stated that, "I didn't 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." In March 1997, Vice President Gore also had to explain certain fund-raising calls he made to solicit funds for the
Democratic Party 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's no controlling legal authority that says that's any violation of any law."
2000 Presidential election
After two terms as Vice President, Gore ran for President in the
2000 United States Presidential election, selecting Senator
Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate. Gore's policies had changed substantially from his
1988 Presidential campaign when he ran as a Southern Centrist, reflecting his eight years as Vice President.
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. Florida's
Republican Secretary of State,
Katherine Harris, eventually certified Florida's vote count. This led to the
Florida election recount, a move to further examine the
Florida results. The Florida recount was stopped a few weeks later by the
Supreme Court of the United States. In the ruling,
Bush v. Gore, the Florida recount was called unconstitutional and that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the
December 12 deadline, effectively ending the recounts. This 7-2 vote ruled that the standards the Florida Supreme Court provided for a recount as unconstitutional due to violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and further ruled 5-4 that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the
December 12 deadline. This case ordered an end to recounting underway in selected Florida counties, effectively giving
George W. Bush a 534 vote victory in Florida and consequently Florida's 25
electoral votes and the presidency. The results of the decision led to Gore winning the
popular vote by approximately 500,000 votes nationwide, but receiving 266 electoral votes to Bush's 271 (1 DC Elector abstained).
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."
The 2000 election is the subject of a 2008
made-for-TV movie directed by
Jay Roach, produced by, and starring
Kevin Spacey called
Recount. It premiered on the
HBO cable network on May 25, 2008.
2004 Presidential election
Initially, Al Gore was a potential candidate for the
2004 Presidential Election leading to the creation of the bumper sticker "Re-elect Gore in 2004!" On
December 16,
2002, however, Gore announced that he wouldn't run in 2004, stating, "I personally have the energy and drive and ambition to make another campaign, but I don't think it's the right thing for me to do [...] I think that a campaign that would be a rematch between myself and President Bush would inevitably involve a focus on the past that would in some measure distract from the focus on the future that I think all campaigns have to be about." Despite Gore taking himself out of the race, a handful of his supporters formed a national campaign to "
draft" him into running.
The draft effort came to an end in December 2003 when Gore publicly endorsed
Governor of Vermont Howard Dean (over his former running mate Lieberman) weeks before the first primary of the election cycle. Gore's endorsement was met with criticism by eight Democratic contenders including
John Kerry. Dean's candidacy eventually failed and he left the race in February, 2004. On
February 9,
2004, 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
John Kerry as the presumptive Democratic nominee.
On
April 28,
2004, Gore announced that he'd be donating $6 million to support Kerry and 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.
In July 2004, Gore opened the
2004 Democratic National Convention. He stated, " let's make sure that this time every vote is counted. Let's make sure not only that the Supreme Court doesn't pick the next President, but also that this President isn't the one who picks the next Supreme Court." In reference to third-party presidential candidate
Ralph Nader, Gore also stated, "I also ask tonight for the help of those who supported a third party candidate in 2000. I urge you to ask yourselves this question: do you still believe that there was no difference between the candidates?" However, as he didn't reject the possibility of future involvement in politics, the prospect of a Gore candidacy became the topic of public discussion and speculation.
Beginning in 2006, Gore's popularity increased. Some credit the release of
An Inconvenient Truth at that time. After
An Inconvenient Truth was nominated for an Academy Award,
Donna Brazile (Gore's campaign chairwoman from the
2000 campaign) speculated on the possibility that Gore might announce a possible presidential candidacy for the 2008 election. During a speech on
January 31,
2007, at
Moravian College, Brazile stated, "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.'" During the award ceremony, Gore and actor
Leonardo DiCaprio shared the stage to speak about the "
greening" of the ceremony itself. Gore began to give a speech that appeared to be leading up to an announcement that he'd run for president. However, background music drowned him out and he was escorted offstage, implying that it was a rehearsed gag, which he later acknowledged. Later that evening his film won the Academy Award and speculation increased about his possible run.
In addition, a nationwide Gallup poll of 485 Democrats and Democratic leaners in mid-November 2007 showed Gore receiving 17% of the votes in a hypothetical Democratic primary, second to
Hillary Clinton, tied with
Barack Obama, and ahead of
John Edwards. A previous
June 29 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." An even earlier 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.
There were also
grassroots draft campaigns including one group which considered a
write-in campaign for the
New Hampshire primary on
January 8 2008 before it was halted. Other grassroots groups in
California and
New York attempted to convince him to run as well as a number of web-based organizations.
In February 2008, Gore stated that he'd no plans to endorse a candidate and that he expected a candidate to be named through the primary process. Some interpreted his reticence as a sign that Gore would come out of a brokered 2008 Democratic National Convention as a "compromise candidate" (perhaps with Obama or Clinton as VP) if the party decided it couldn't nominate either of the candidates. Gore responded to this speculation in a
March 30 2008 interview with
60 Minutes in which he stated that he's maintaining a neutral position on the subject of the election and is "not applying for the job of broker." He reiterated these points in a
May 6 2008 interview with
NPR. On the subject of presidential endorsements, Gore further stated on
May 20 2008 that "I have not made an endorsement and I won't do so today [...] I've not decided whether or when I will."
Gore will be a "featured guest" at a "unity dinner" for donors who represent both
Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton. It is a fund-raiser for the
Democratic National Committee and will be held on
31 May 2008.
Environmental issues
According to
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 greenhouse gases. He held the first congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s." He also starred in the
Academy Award - winning 2006
documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. The film documents the evidence for
anthropogenic global warming and warns of dire environmental consequences if people and industries don't make immediate changes to their behavior. It is the fourth-highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history.
In February 2007, critics stated that "a report by the
Nashville Electric Service revealed that Mr Gore's mansion in
Nashville consumed between 12 and 20 times more electricity than the average family home and that his electricity consumption had risen since the film's release in 2005."
WKRN-TV reported that the Gore family obtains their power from the
Nashville Electric Service's "renewable energy initiative",
The Green Power Switch program.
The Detroit Free Press also noted that "Gore purchased 108 blocks of 'green power' for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills. That’s a total of $432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources.The green power Gore purchased is equivalent to recycling 2.48 million aluminum cans or 286,092 pounds of newspaper, according to comparison figures on NES’s Web site." The
Associated Press reported on
December 13 2007 that Gore "has completed a host of improvements to make the home more energy efficient, and a building-industry group has praised the house as one of the nation's most environmentally friendly [...] 'Short of tearing it down and starting anew, I don't know how it could have been rated any higher,' said Kim Shinn of the U.S. Green Building Council, which gave the house its second-highest rating for sustainable design."
Gore has also been criticized by those who argue that he maintains carbon neutrality by purchasing carbon credits from
Generation Investment Management, a company for which he serves as Chairman. In response, a spokesman for Generation stated that "Gore isn't profiting from his crusade against global warming" and that Gore doesn't purchase carbon credits from Generation. Instead, Generation purchases carbon credits from third party providers such as the Carbon Neutral Company to offset the personal emissions of all employees and their families, including Gore's. He also argued that Generation doesn't sell carbon credits, nor does it develop them--rather, they voluntarily purchase credits from others on behalf of employees. Other critics accuse him of attempting to make a huge profit from his global warming activism. However, Gore denies money motivates him to fight global warming.
Gore was awarded the 2007
Nobel Peace Prize, which was shared by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by
Rajendra K. Pachauri (
Delhi,
India). The award was given "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" on
October 12,
2007. Gore and Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 in
Oslo,
Norway on
December 10,
2007.
Internet and technology
Gore has been involved with the development of the Internet since the 1970s, first as a Congressman and later as Senator and Vice-President. Internet pioneers
Vint Cerf and
Bob Kahn stated in the 2000 article "Al Gore and the Internet", that Gore was "the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development." His
High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (often referred to as the
Gore Bill) was passed on
December 9,
1991 and led to the
National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "
information superhighway."
In a
March 9 1999 interview on CNN's
Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Gore stated, "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system." This statement was often misquoted by media outlets and led to the creation of a widely spread
urban legend that Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet."
In response to the controversy, Cerf and Kahn argued that, "We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he 'invented' the Internet. Moreover, there's no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet."
Gore would later poke fun at the controversy on the
The Late Show with David Letterman when he read
Letterman's Top 10 List, which for this show was called, "Top Ten Rejected Gore -
Lieberman Campaign Slogans." Number nine on the list was: "Remember, America, I gave you the Internet, and I can take it away!"
Gore has been a member of the board of directors of
Apple Inc. since 2003 and serves as a Senior Advisor to
Google Inc.
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."
Private citizen
Teaching
Gore taught at four universities in 2001 as a visiting professor:
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,
Fisk University,
Middle Tennessee State University, and
UCLA.
Political activism
On
September 23,
2002, in a speech before the
Commonwealth Club, Gore criticized President
George W. Bush and
Congress for what he claimed was their rush to war prior to the outbreak of hostilities in
Iraq. In it, Gore alleged that the war was a risk to America's reputation in the world, and questioned the legality of the
Bush Doctrine.
A few years later in September 2005, Gore chartered two aircraft in order 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. Later, on
January 16,
2006, Gore delivered a speech criticizing President Bush's use of domestic
wiretaps without a warrant. Also, on
February 12 2006 at the
Jeddah Economic Forum, Gore argued that the US government had committed abuses against Arabs living in America after the 9/11 attacks "and that most Americans didn't support such treatment." Finally, in January 2008, Gore posted a video on the
Current TV website, in support of
same-sex marriage. He stated:
» I think it's wrong for the government to discriminate against people because of that person’s sexual orientation. I think that gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women — to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join together in marriage, and I don’t understand why it's considered by some people to be a threat to heterosexual marriage to allow it by gays and lesbians. Shouldn’t we be promoting the kind of faithfulness and loyalty to one’s partner regardless of sexual orientation? Because if you don’t do that, then to that extent you’re promoting promiscuity, and you’re promoting all the problems that can result from promiscuity. The loyalty and love that two people feel for one another when they fall in love ought to be celebrated and encouraged and shouldn’t be prevented by any form of discrimination in the law.
Selected honors and awards
2008 The Gore resolution (HJR712) passed by the Tennessee House of Representatives which honors Gore's "efforts to curb global warming"
2007 Gothenburg Prize for Sustainable Development
2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (environment)
2007 Primetime Emmy Award: Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television for Current TV (interactive technology)
2007 International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences: Founders Award for Current TV and for work in the area of global warming
2007 Quill Awards: History/current events/politics, The Assault on Reason
2007 Prince of Asturias Award in Spain (environment)
2007 The Sir David Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Filmmaking (environment)
2007 Honorary Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2007 Honorary Doctorate, Concordia University
2006 Quill Awards: History/current events/politics, An Inconvenient Truth
2005 Webby Awards: Lifetime Achievement Award (interactive technology)
1998 The Computerworld Honors Program Honoring Those Who Use Information Technology to Benefit Society: Toshiba America Leadership Award for Education
1993 First Annual Cisco Systems Circle Award: "In recognition of his visionary leadership in building global awareness of computer networking through the National Information Highway Initiative"
Electoral history
Gore has been involved in politics since the mid 1970s.
Bibliography
Know Climate Change and 101 Q and A on Climate Change from 'Save Planet Earth Series', 2008 (children's books)
Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues, January, 2006
Transcript of Al Gore's speech at the Sierra Summit, September 9, 2005
Remarks of Former Vice President Al Gore to the Democratic National Convention, 2004
Transcript: Former Vice President Al Gore:Matching our Nation's Economic Course to Our Current Realities — Brookings Institution, October, 2002
Transcript: Gore remarks on Florida vote certification, November 27, 2000
Further Information
Get more info on 'Al Gore'.
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