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Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., or Al Gore (born March 31, 1948) was the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Prior to the Vice Presidency, Gore served in the U. S. House of Representatives (1977–85) and the U. S. Senate (1985–93), representing Tennessee. Gore has won an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, and, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gore was the Democratic nominee for President in the 2000 election, which was one of the most controversial elections in American history.[1] After a series of voting discrepancies and court challenges in the state of Florida the United States Supreme Court, with its final ruling on Bush v. Gore, stopped ongoing ballot recounts, giving George W. Bush the electoral college victory, and consequently the presidency.[2]
Today, Gore is president of the American television channel Current TV (which won the Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television award 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.
Gore lectures widely on the topic of global warming, which he calls "the climate crisis",[4] and in 2006 starred in the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, discussing global warming and the environment. Under his leadership, one of Gore"s organizations, Save Our Selves, organized the benefit concert Live Earth in an effort to raise awareness about climate change. The concert was held all over the world on July 07, 2007 (07.07.07). In July 2007, he announced teaming with actress Cameron Diaz for a TV climate contest 60 Seconds to Save the Earth to gain people"s support in solving the climate crisis.[5] He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on October 12, 2007, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "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".[6]
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."[7]
While Gore has frequently stated that "I"m not planning to be a candidate again,"[8] there is continuing speculation that he may run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
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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:[9] 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.[10]
Gore attended the elite St. Albans School where he ranked 25th (of 51) in his senior class.[11] In preparation for his college applications, Gore scored a 1355 on his SAT (625 in verbal and 730 in math). [11] 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. [11]
In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, the only university to which he applied. (During his freshman year, he lived in the same residence hall as that of actor Tommy Lee Jones). He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row[12] 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. [11] 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.[13] 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.[14]
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.[15] Gore left Vanderbilt after completing the required one-year Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for students returning to secular work.[16] 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.[17] It frustrated him, however, that a journalist could only expose wrongdoing without being able to correct it. That realization led to 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 serviceWhen 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.[18] 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.[19] Gore"s positions as a Senator with regard to Iraq would later become an issue in his 1992 campaign for Vice President.[20]
1988 Presidential election Main article: Al Gore presidential campaign, 1988Gore 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.[18]
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.
Gore, as Vice President.
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.[21] 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,[22] 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.[23]
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[24]. The bill subsequently passed 234–200 in the House of Representatives.[25]
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).[26]
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.[27]
Also in 1998, Gore became associated with Digital Earth.[28]
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." [29]
2000 Presidential election
Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign logo
Main article: Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000
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.
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.[30] 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."[31]
Gore became only the third nominee in American history to win the popular vote (by half a million more votes than his opponent) but lose the electoral vote. Gore ultimately received 267 electoral votes to Bush"s 271.[32] Gore also became one of the few nominees not to carry his home state, the previous most recent being George H.W. Bush.
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.[33]
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[34] — 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.[35]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
