Gore, Albert (1948-)

The forty-fifth vice president of the United States. In 1969, Albert Arnold Gore Jr. graduated from Harvard University with a degree in government. Gore opposed the Vietnam War (1965–1975), but he enlisted in the army and served for six months as a military journalist in Vietnam without seeing combat. From 1971 to 1976, Gore worked as a reporter for the Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper, writing investigative pieces and covering local politics.

In 1976, at the age of twenty-eight, Gore won his father's former seat in the House of Representatives and was easily reelected in the heavily Democratic district in 1978, 1980, and 1982. In the House, Gore led a campaign to televising its floor proceedings. When that campaign succeeded, he delivered the chamber's first televised speech on C-SPAN in March 1979. Gore successfully jumped to the Senate in 1984, winning with 61 percent of the vote.

Reelected to his Senate seat in 1990, Gore was one of only ten Democrats in the Senate to vote to authorize of the use of military force against Iraq in January 1991. Gore's vote upset some Democratic Party loyalists, but he repaired the damage by vigorously defending Democrats who had voted against the measure from charges that they were unpatriotic.

In 1992, Bill Clinton (1993–2001) of Arkansas surprised many commentators by picking Gore as his vice-presidential running mate. Presidential candidates usually try to balance the ticket with a running mate who is from another region and who has a somewhat different political ideology. In contrast to this norm, Gore shared Clinton's moderate southern Democrat outlook and was from a state that borders Arkansas. Moreover, they were only a year and a half apart in age. Nevertheless, Clinton and Gore used these [Page 146]similarities to project an image of unity and youthful energy. Gore's service in Vietnam also aided Clinton, who had avoided military service. Clinton and Gore defeated incumbents George H.W. Bush (1989–1993) and Dan Quayle by an electoral vote of 370-168.

Gore, with his extensive experience in Washington, became one of President Clinton's closest advisers. Gore took on many critical assignments, serving as the head of the president's effort to “reinvent government,” a long-term project to reduce the size of and reengineer the federal government to achieve efficiency and cost savings. Gore also functioned as the administration's point man on congressional relations, environmental protection, defense, and high technology.

During the summer of 1993, after much partisan debate in Congress over Clinton's budget plan, Vice President Gore, presiding over the Senate, cast the deciding vote for the plan. Another celebrated moment for Gore came on November 9, 1993, when he debated the merits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with billionaire H. Ross Perot on the “Larry King Live” talk show. Polls showed after the debate that Gore and the pro-NAFTA position had won decisively, giving proponents a big psychological boost. The outcome induced many wavering members of Congress to support the agreement, which passed both houses.

In 1996, Gore and Clinton faced Republicans Bob Dole and Jack Kemp in the general election. Gore proved to be an effective defender of Clinton administration positions during the vice-presidential debate with Kemp, handily winning it, according to most political observers. The Clinton-Gore ticket defeated Dole and Kemp by an electoral vote margin of 379 to 159.

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