Background

Early Life

A native of Washington, D.C., Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. was the son of a U.S. congressman and Senator from Tennessee. Gore, Jr. attended school in Washington, D.C. and spent summers in Carthage, Tennessee working on his family's hay, tobacco, and cattle farm. He attended Harvard College starting in 1965 where he roomed with actor Tommy Lee Jones. In 1969, Gore graduated with honors with a B.A. in government.

Although opposed to the Vietnam war, Gore enlisted in the U.S. Army upon graduating from university. The Gore family had political connections that secured him a spot in the National Guard allowing him to evade the draft. Gore reportedly declined the offer because of his overwhelming sense of civic duty.

Gore's first military assignment was as a journalist for a military newspaper. He was sent to Bien Hoa, Vietnam for four months in January 1971 and moved to the Army Engineer Command in Long Binh for one month. Two months before the end of his enlistment, Gore was granted a non-essential personnel honorable discharge in order to attend divinity school at Vanderbilt University with a scholarship from the Rockerfeller Foundation. Gore completed one year required with the scholarship and left the university. In 1970, Gore married his high school girlfriend, Mary Aitcheson (also known as Tipper). From 1970 to 1975, Gore worked in Nashville, Tennessee as a newspaper reporter for The Tennessean. He investigated several instances of alleged corruption that eventually resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two Metro councilmen from Nashville. These experiences cultivated his interest in law and politics, which prompted him to go to law school.

House and Senate

In 1976, Gore quit law school and ran for Tennessee's fourth district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives after the district's 30 year incumbet announced his retirement. Gore ran unopposed in the general election after defeating his opponent in the Democratic primary. He went on to see three more terms before running for the U.S. Senate in 1984. Serving as a Tennessee's Democratic Senator until 1993, Gore was a member of the Armed Services committee, Commerce, Science and Transportation committee, the Joint Committee on Printing, the Joint Economic Committee; and Rules and Administration committee. One of his most notable contributions as Senator was the introduction of the Gore Bill in the 1980s. Passed in 1991 as the High Performance Computing and Communication Act, the bill led to the development of the National Research and Education Network, the National Information Infrastructure, the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, the web browser Mosaic, and the creation of a high-speed fiber optic network, which, together, led to the expansion of the internet. In a 1999 interview with CNN, Gore said, "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" (Source: CNN). Following this interview, Gore's claim in the development of the internet sparked a controversy in the media, which distorted Gore's statement and affected his public image. In a Mar. 11, 1999 Wired News article, author Declan McCullagh writes, "It's a time-honored tradition for presidential hopefuls to claim credit for other people's successes. ... After Gore took credit for the Internet..." (Source: Wired News). In a follow-up article, McCullagh used the word "invent" to inaccurately describe Gore's previous claim (Source: Wired News).

During the 1980s, Gore attempted address to Suddam Hussein's hostile regime in congress on two occasions. Disturbed by Hussein's growing nuclear program, links to terrorist organizations, and use of poisonous mustard and nerve gas on Kurdish civilians, Gore cosponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988. The bill would have imposed sanctions on Iraq, cut off financial assistance offered by the Reagan administration, and assisted Kurdish refugees. The Reagan administration was intensely opposed to this bill since it had been providing support and funding to Hussein's war against Iran, a mutual foe, since Iraq's blitzkrieg attack in 1980. The administration was also concerned with U.S. access to an oil pipeline that ran through Jordan. The bill unanimously passed in the Senate in the wake of Hussein's attack on 48 Iraqi Kurdish villages, but was defeated a veto from President Reagan.

Gore unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1988 presidential election. The following year Gore began writing Earth in the Balance, a book on environmental conservation, which 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 President

In 1992, Bill Clinton chose Gore to be his running mate in the presidential contest against President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle. The Clinton-Gore campaign, centered on boosting productivity and growth by raising taxes on the wealthy and increasing spending in key areas, defeated the Bush-Quayle campaign which offered lower taxes and cuts in government spending. Gore was inaugurated as Vice President on January 20, 1993. The two were re-elected to a second two were re-elected in a second term in the 1996 election, defeating Senator Robert Dole (R-KA) and Congressman Jack Kemp (R-NY).

As Vice President, Gore worked closely with the Republican-led House to slow federal spending and eventually balance the federal budget. Gore produced the National Performance Review in which waste, fraud, and other abuse in the federal government were unveiled. It stressed the need for cleaning up the bureaucracy and simplifying regulations and later helped President Clinton cut out bureaucratic and regulatory excess. Gore was also involved with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and am unsuccessful project promoting a NASA satellite that would provide a constant view of Earth, and promoting Digital Earth projects.

2000 Presidential Elections

Gore received the Democratic nomination for the 2000 presidential elections and selected Senator Joe Lieberman as his vice-presidential running mate. The presidential race came down to the state of Florida where the news networks declared Gore the winner and then later gave Republican candidate George W. Bush the title before retracting both projections. A margin of only 537 votes initiated a recount. After one month, several controversies, and numerous court challenges, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Florida recount was unconstitutional. Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision but offered his concession. Gore received 267 electoral votes to Bush's 271, making him the third candidate to win the popular vote (by half a million) but lose the electoral vote. Gore also became one of the few candidates to lose in their home state.

Post Election Life

In 2001, Gore accepted visiting professorships at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Fisk University Middle Tennessee State University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. That year, Gore also became Vice Chairman of Los Angeles financial firm Metropolitan West Financial LLC.

Despite his popularity, Gore announced that he would not run again for President in 2004. He claimed to not want the race to turn into a rematch at the expense of important issues. His supporters formed a national campaign to "draft" him into running. However, that effort ended when Gore publicly endorsed Governor of Vermont Howard Dean.

In 2004 began to focus heavily on climate change and global warming, with the launch of an investment firm in that seeks out environmentally and socially conscious companies. INdTV Holdings, a company co-founded by Gore, purchased cable news channel NewsWorld International from Vivendi Universal. Relaunched as Current TV in 2005, the new network aimed to become an independent source of political information and news for 18-34 year olds. One of Gore's organizations, Save Our Selves, organized the 07 July 2007 benefit concert Live Earth in an effort to raise awareness about climate change. He has been on numerous tours speaking on the issue of global warming.

An Inconvenient Truth

In 2006, the release of a documentary film on climate change featuring Gore was met with popular response. Also that year, Gore released a companion book that he authored that reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in one month. The film, An Inconvenient Truth, went on to receive numerous awards including the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Gore's popularity surged, introducing the possibility for a 2008 presidential nomination.

Gore published a book in 2007, The Assault on Reason, in which he asserts the electronic media, especially television, endangers American democracy but sources like the internet can "redeem the integrity of representative democracy." Gore is president of the American television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., an unofficial adviser to Google's senior management, and chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection.

There as been substantial speculation in the media as to whether Gore should or will run for President in the 2008 elections. As of July 2007, Gore has not announced his candidacy, nor has he rejected the possibility.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate: Al Gore and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) won the Nobel Peace Prize today, October 12, 2007 (Source: NY Times).

On October 10, 2007 a British judge ruled that students forced to watch An Inconvenient Truth must be notified in advance of the film's factual errors. The judge further suggested that approximately 25 minutes of the 98-minute film should be removed (source: England and Wales High Court).

Dr. William Gray, one of the world's most prominent meteorologists labeled the theory that won the Prize for the IPCC and Gore "ridiculous" and coming from "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works." Dr. Gray is of the opinion that humans are not responsible for global warming. (Source: Sydney Morning Herald).

Professional Positions

Accomplishments

Criticism

Additional Information

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