Gore, Al

Elected as vice president with President Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Al Gore (1948– ) previously had served [Page p187]eight years in the Senate (1985–1993) and eight years in the House (1977–1985).

His bid in 2000 to succeed Clinton resulted in the most unusual presidential election of the twentieth century. Gore and his running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, won the popular vote. However, problems with the voting procedures in Florida left the electoral votes in that state—and the outcome of the presidential contest—undecided for five weeks. After a series of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a controversial 5-4 ruling that decided the election in Republican George W. Bush's favor.

A Harvard graduate, Gore was an army journalist during the Vietnam War, but he never saw combat. From 1971 to 1976 he worked as a reporter for a Nashville newspaper.

With strong political roots—his father Albert Gore Sr. had represented Tennessee in the House and Senate for more than thirty years—Gore moved effortlessly into politics. In 1976 he won his father's former seat in the House of Representatives, and he was easily reelected to the heavily Democratic district in 1978, 1980, and 1982. In 1984 he successfully jumped to the Senate—receiving more than 60 percent of the vote, despite Republican Ronald Reagan's landslide reelection as president.

During his years in Congress, the Tennessee Democrat gained a reputation as a moderately liberal, detail-oriented lawmaker. Gore became a respected voice on technology development, the environment, and defense issues. He wrote a book outlining an international plan of action on environmental issues, called Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.

Gore ran unsuccessfully for his party's presidential nomination in 1988 and then joined the winning Clinton ticket four years later. As vice president, he became one of Clinton's closest advisers, taking on many critical assignments. He continued to champion technology and the environment, and led the charge for the administration's “reinventing government” program, which was designed to streamline the federal government.

Gore's politically clean image was tarnished slightly in 1997, by unproven charges of misconduct in his campaign fundraising for the 1996 presidential election. He also demonstrated his loyalty to Clinton by remaining steadfast in his support of the president during his impeachment investigation and trial in 1998–1999. But despite the administration's scandals, Gore was the Democratic nominee for president in 2000. The unusual contest that followed marked the first time that the outcome of a presidential election had been determined through the courts. It was also the fourth time in U.S. history that the loser of the popular vote gained the presidency.

Two years later, Gore announced that he would not seek a rematch in 2004. While some analysts predicted that Gore might attempt another campaign in 2008, Gore himself said that he “made the decision in the full awareness that that probably means I will never have another opportunity to run for president.”