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This article is about a United States Vice President. For his father, Congressman from Tennessee, see Albert Gore, Sr.
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.
45th Vice President of the United States
In office
January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001
PresidentBill Clinton
Preceded byDan Quayle
Succeeded byDick Cheney
Personal details
BornMarch 31, 1948
Washington, D.C.
Political partyDemocratic
SpouseMary Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore

Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., commonly known as Al Gore (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, teacher, businessman, and environmentalist who was the 45th Vice President of the United States in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. Previously, he had served in United States House of Representatives (1977-85) and United States Senate (1985-93) for Tennessee.

Gore was the Democratic nominee for President in the 2000 election. He won a plurality of the popular vote, with over half a million more votes than the Republican candidate George W. Bush, but was defeated in the Electoral College by a vote of 271 to 266.

Gore currently is president of the American television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Computer, and an unofficial adviser to Google's senior management. He lectures widely on the topic of global warming, which he calls "the climate crisis".[1]

Gore has contracted to write a new book, The Assault on Reason, to be published May 22, 2007. While Gore has stated that he does not intend to be a Presidential candidate again, he has not ruled it out, and Gore is frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.



Soldier and journalist

File:AlGoreVietnam.gif
Gore served as a field reporter in Vietnam for five months.

Although opposed to the Vietnam War, on August 7, 1969, Gore voluntarily enlisted in the United States Army in order to participate in the war. 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, he was shipped to Vietnam, arriving 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. As his unit was standing down, he applied for and received a non-essential personnel discharge two months early in order to attend divinity school at Vanderbilt University.[2] The chronology of Gore's military service is:

Gore opposed the Vietnam War, but chose to volunteer anyway though he could have avoided serving in Vietnam in a number of ways. A friend of the Gore family reserved a spot for him in the National Guard, which he turned down. Gore has stated that his sense of civic duty compelled him to serve.[3]

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.[4]

After returning from Vietnam, Gore spent five years as a reporter for The Tennessean, a newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee. During this time, Gore also attended Vanderbilt University Divinity School and Law School, although he did not complete a degree at either.[5]


Environment

Gore giving his global warming talk on 7 April 2006

While a Representative, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978-79, and hearings on global warming in the 1980s.[6] While a senator working on his book Earth in the Balance, Gore had traveled around the world on numerous fact-finding missions. During Gore's tenure as Vice President, he was a proponent for environmental protection. On Earth Day 1994, Gore launched the worldwide GLOBE program, an innovative hands-on, school-based education and science activity that made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment and contribute research data for scientists.

In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions [7] [8]. However, many of these proposals were not enacted by Congress, and/or were not implemented to the satisfaction of critics such as Ralph Nader.[9] In 1998, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia wrote Resolution S. 98 that opposed ratification of the Kyoto treaty, and in turn the Senate voted 95 to 0 against the treaty.

In recent years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards global warming awareness and prevention. His Keynote presentation on global warming has received standing ovations, and he has presented it at least 1000 times.

Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft.[10] Gore and his family drive hybrid vehicles.[11]

Beginning in the fall of 2006, Al Gore and a team of renowned climate change scientists and educators will train more than 1,000 individual volunteers to give a version of his presentation on the effects of – and solutions for - global warming, to community groups throughout the U.S. The presentation and training program are based on the message Gore has been giving for more than two decades, which inspired the documentary film and book, An Inconvenient Truth.[12]

An Inconvenient Truth

Main article: An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth Book Cover

Al Gore starred in the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth produced by Paramount Pictures, released on May 24 2006, and on DVD on 21 November 2006. It concerns global warming, an issue which Gore has followed since the 1970s. It is a warning regarding human contribution to climate change and the affects of not making changes in our behavior now. In the movie Al Gore states this is not a political issue but a moral issue. Before August it surpassed Bowling for Columbine as the third-highest grossing documentary film in U.S. history.[13] Gore has also published a book of the same title which became a bestseller.

Coinciding with the release, Gore appeared on the May 13, 2006 episode of Saturday Night Live. In the opening, he plays himself from a parallel Earth in which he won the 2000 Presidential race. Gore then addresses the nation on the fact that: they stopped global warming and glaciers are now attacking America; gasoline costs 19¢ a gallon; George W. Bush is Baseball Commissioner; welfare and Social Security have been fixed and America now enjoys universal health care; Gore helped develop an anti-hurricane/tornado machine; and the federal surplus is down to eleven trillion dollars. Gore later appeared on Weekend Update and engaged in a debate on global warming with Amy Poehler.

In late 2006, many media outlets began speculating that Gore may win an Oscar for best documentary for An Inconvenient Truth, although it would actually not be him winning the Oscar, but the movie's producers.

The Internet and the Webbys

Gore bill

Up until the early 1990s, Internet usage was limited. Campbell-Kelly and Aspray note in their 1996 text, Computer: A History of the Information Machine:

During the second half of the 1980s, the joys of 'surfing the net,' began to excite the interest of people beyond the professional computer-using communities [...] However, the existing computer networks were largely in government, higher education and business. They were not a free good and were not open to hobbyists or private firms that did not have access to a host computer. To fill this gap, a number of firms such as CompuServe, Prodigy, GEnie, and America Online sprang up to provide low cost network access [...] While these networks gave access to Internet for e-mail (typically on a pay-per-message basis), they did not give the ordinary citizen access to the full range of the Internet, or to the glories of gopherspace or the World Wide Web. In a country whose Constitution enshrines freedom of information, most of its citizens were effectively locked out of the library of the future. The Internet was no longer a technical issue, but a political one. The problem of giving ordinary Americans network access had exercised Senator Al Gore since the late 1970s. In 1990 he was the author of the High Performance Computing Act, which proposed the creation of a high-speed fiber optic network that would produce enormous leverage for the information economy of the twenty-first century. [14]

Prior to the passage of this bill, Gore was invited to contribute an article to the September 1991 issue of Scientific American entitled Scientific American presents the September 1991 Single Copy Issue: Communications, Computers, and Networks. Gore's essay, Infrastructure for the Global Village, commented upon the lack of network access described above and argues: "Rather than holding back, the U.S. should lead by building the information infrastructure, essential if all Americans are to gain access to this transforming technology" (150) [...] "high speed networks must be built that tie together millions of computers, providing capabilities that we cannot even imagine" (152).

In developing the Gore Bill, Gore was highly influenced by the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network [15] submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET [16].

After hearing this report, Gore introduced legislation during the late 1980s known informally as the 'Gore Bill'.[17] It was passed, however, as the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 on Dec. 9, 1991 and led to the NII or National Information Infrastructure [18] which Gore referred to as the Information superhighway.

Leonard Kleinrock lists this bill as an important moment in Internet history:

A second development occurred around this time, namely, then-Senator Al Gore, a strong and knowledgeable proponent of the Internet, promoted legislation that resulted in President George Bush signing the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. This Act allocated $600 million for high performance computing and for the creation of the National Research and Education Network [13-14]. The NREN brought together industry, academia and government in a joint effort to accelerate the development and deployment of gigabit/sec networking. [19]

President George H. W. Bush predicted that this bill would help "unlock the secrets of DNA," open up foreign markets to free trade, and a promise of cooperation between government, academia, and industry. [20]

Information superhighway

According to Campbell-Kelly and Aspray in Computer: A History of the Information Machine:

In the early 1990s the Internet was big news...In the fall of 1990 there were just 313,000 computers on the Internet; by 1996, there were close to 10 million. The networking idea became politicized during the 1992 Clinton-Gore election campaign, where the rhetoric of the 'information highway' captured the public imagination. On taking office in 1993, the new administration set in place a range of government initiatives for a National Information Infrastructure aimed at ensuring that all American citizens ultimately gain access to the new networks (1996:283).

In February 1993, President Clinton and Vice President Gore submitted a report, Technology for America's Economic Growth [21] which outlined the ways in which their administration planned further development of what Gore referred to as the Information Superhighway by the year 2000. Gore further developed these ideas in speeches that he made at The Superhighway Summit [22], on 1994-01-11 at Royce Hall, UCLA and for the International Telecommunications Union [23] on 1994-03-21. In addition, on 1994-01-13, Gore "became the first U.S. vice president to hold a live interactive news conference on an international computer network". [24] [25]

Mosaic

Funding for the development of Mosaic in 1993, [26] the World Wide Web browser which is often credited as leading to the Internet boom during the mid-1990s, came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a program created by the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 [27].

1999 CNN interview

On 1999-03-09, during an interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, 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. [28]

As a result of the publication of three articles in Wired News[29] (which focused upon the above interview), Gore's statement, "I took the initiative in creating the internet" became the subject of heavy satire. [30] Media reports surrounding this statement sometimes misrepresented Gore's words to claim that he "invented the internet".[31]

Gore, himself, poked fun at the controversy. In September 2000, as a guest on the The Late Show with David Letterman, Gore read a list of the "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!" [32]

Cerf and Kahn response

In response to this controversy, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Robert E. Kahn issued a statement on 2000-09-28:

[A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.[33]

Apple Computer and Google

In May 2003, Gore joined the board of directors of Apple Computer.[34] [35] Gore also served as the chairman of a special investigative committee which investigated illicit backdating of stock options and cleared Apple CEO Steve Jobs. [36] He also serves as a Senior Advisor to Google Inc.[35]

Webby award

In 2005, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences honored Gore at the Webby Awards for Lifetime Achievement for three decades of contributions to the Internet. The Webby Awards, which are widely hailed as the Oscars of the web, "wanted to set the record straight" about Al Gore and the Internet once and for all. Tiffany Shlain, the awards' founder and chairwoman said, "It's just one of those instances someone did amazing work for three decades as Congressman, Senator and Vice President and it got spun around into this political mess." [37]

When he accepted his award, Gore joked during an acceptance speech limited to five words (according to Webby Awards rules): "Please don't recount this vote".[38]

Private citizen

Visiting professor

Following his election loss, Gore accepted visiting professorships at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Middle Tennessee State University, University of California, Los Angeles, and Fisk University.

Investment firm

In late 2001, Al Gore became Vice Chairman of Los Angeles financial firm Metropolitan West Financial LLC.

In late 2004, Gore launched an investment firm Generation Investment Management, which he chairs, to seek out companies taking a responsible view on big global issues like climate change. It was created to assist the growing demand for an investment style which can bring returns by blending traditional equity research with a focus on more intangible non-financial factors such as social and environmental responsibility and corporate governance.

Television network

Current TV logo
Main article: Current TV

On May 4, 2004, INdTV Holdings, a company co-founded by Gore and Joel Hyatt, purchased cable news channel NewsWorld International from Vivendi Universal. The new network will not have political leanings, Gore said, but will serve as an "independent voice" for a target audience of people between 18 and 34 "who want to learn about the world in a voice they recognize and a view they recognize as their own."[39] The network was relaunched under the name Current TV on August 1, 2005.

Criticism of Bush Administration

On September 23, 2002, Gore spoke in San Francisco to The Commonwealth Club and made a controversial speech blasting Bush on the timing of the Iraq war,[40] although he admitted Saddam was a potential danger and suggested Saddam had WMD saying: "We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."[41]

Gore also spoke against rushing to war with Iraq, advising caution and saying that Iraq was a diversion from fighting Al-Qaeda and terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere: "I don't think that we should allow anything to diminish our focus on avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists who we know to be responsible for it. The fact that we don't know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify."

File:Goresnl.jpg
Al Gore hosting Saturday Night Live alongside West Wing stars Martin Sheen and John Spencer.

Before the November 5, 2002 midterm elections Gore re-emerged into the public eye with a 14-city book tour and a well-orchestrated "full Gore" media blitz which included a pair of policy speeches. On September 23, Gore delivered a speech on the impending 2003 invasion of Iraq and the War on Terrorism that generated a fair amount of commentary. On October 2, he made a speech on Bush's handling of the economy to the Brookings Institution. Also, during this time period Gore guest starred on several programs such as The Late Show with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live.

On the political front, Gore kept his promise of staying involved in public debate when he offered his criticism and advice to the Bush Administration on key topics such as the Occupation of Iraq, USA Patriot Act, and environmental issues, most notably global warming. Gore also continued to visit campuses across the nation lecturing on issues such as race, mass media and democracy.

On April 10, 2004, Gore met with the 9/11 Commission in private to give his testimony on what the Clinton administration did to prevent terror attacks. In a statement after the three-hour session, the commission said he was candid and forthcoming, and thanked him for his "continued cooperation."

In the summer of 2004, Gore teamed up with MoveOn.org, to promote the science fiction film, The Day After Tomorrow. Gore said that although the movie shows a far-fetched picture of the climate change, it would escalate public debate on the issue.

Gore at the Ansari X Prize Executive Summit, October 19, 2006

On April 27, 2005, Gore gave an hour-long speech lambasting the GOP's effort to do away with the legislative filibuster. In response to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who for weeks had repeated threats to impose the "nuclear option" if Senate Democrats did not stop blocking judicial nominees via the filibuster, Gore said, "Their grand design is an all-powerful executive using a weakened legislature to fashion a compliant judiciary in its own image. The Senate has confirmed 205 or over 95% of President Bush's nominees. Democrats have held up only 10 nominees, less than 5%. Compare that with the 60 Clinton nominees who were blocked by Republican obstruction between 1995 and 2000. What is involved here is a power grab." Gore also took aim at what he called "religious zealots" who claim special knowledge of God's will in American politics. He went on to say, "They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against people of faith. How dare they!" This was Gore's first major policy speech of 2005 and also the first one since the defeat of Democratic hopeful John Kerry in late 2004.

Civil Rights

On January 16, 2006, Al Gore delivered a speech criticizing President Bush's use of domestic wiretaps without a warrant. Gore stated that Bush broke the law and recommended that an independent counsel investigate the matter further[42].

On February 12 2006 at the Jeddah Economic Forum, Gore contended the US government had committed ‘terrible abuses’ against Arabs living in America after the 9/11 attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment. "The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake,” Gore stated. “The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” He told the Saudi audience, many of them educated in US universities, that Arabs in the United States had been “indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable. (...) Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it’s wrong. I do want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country.”[43] Gore however was criticized for these comments, with Terrence Jeffrey of Human Events and Jack Kelly of RealClearPolitics pointing out that 9/11 Commission reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the attacks, told interrogators most of the hijackers he selected were Saudis because they had the easiest time getting visas (page 492). [44] [45]

Hurricane Katrina

In September 2005, Gore chartered two aircraft to evacuate 270 evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.[46] He was highly critical of the government and federal response in the days after the hurricane.

Trivia

  • On 19 March 1979, Gore became the first person to appear on C-SPAN, making a speech in the House chambers.[47]
  • Gore is the highest elected official to have run a marathon while in office. He ran the 1997 Marine Corps Marathon in 4:58:25 or a pace of 11:25/mile. His Secret Service agents were also runners and changed every few miles.
  • Gore climbed to the summit of Mt. Rainier in 1999.[48]
  • Gore provided a spoken-word contribution to the song "Al Gore", written by Robert Ellis Orral, and performed by Monkey Bowl.
  • Gore wrote a note targeted toward savvy web users on his 2000 campaign site (algore.com) that was hidden in the HTML source code, only visible by "viewing source".
  • Gore has a voice credit in two episodes of Futurama (on which his daughter Kristin was a writer and story editor) where he appears as himself. In addition, Futurama's Bender appears with Gore in A Terrifying Message from Al Gore, promoting An Inconvenient Truth.

Controversies

Main article: Al Gore controversies

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/gore.html
  2. ^ [1]
  3. ^ [2]
  4. ^ Turque, Bill. Inventing Al Gore, Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ISBN 0-395-88323-7. cited by Issues2000.org More Al Gore on Homeland Security
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference PostGrades was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ http://pbs.org/now/science/climatechange.html
  7. ^ "Remarks By Al Gore, Climate Change Conference". Retrieved 2006-09-01.
  8. ^ "Vice President Gore: Strong Environmental Leadership for the New Millennium". Retrieved 2006-09-01.
  9. ^ http://debatethis.org/gore/enviro/naderopenletter.html#globalwarming
  10. ^ "Born Again". Guardian Unlimited. May 31, 2006.
  11. ^ "Larry King Live - Interview with Al Gore". CNN. June 13, 2006.
  12. ^ http://www.cutco2.org/2006/09/this-just-in-from-climate-project.html
  13. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=documentary.htm
  14. ^ Campbell-Kelly and Aspray (1996). Computer: A History of the Information Machine. New York: BasicBooks, 298
  15. ^ http://newton.nap.edu/books/NI000393/html
  16. ^ http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml#Transition
  17. ^ http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/internet_history/internet_history_90s.shtml
  18. ^ http://www.ibiblio.org/nii/goremarks.html
  19. ^ ""The Internet rules of engagement: then and now" (PDF).
  20. ^ http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/papers/1991/91120901.html
  21. ^ http://ntl.bts.gov/card_view.cfm?docid=23566
  22. ^ http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/011194-remarks-by-the-vp-on-television.htm
  23. ^ http://clinton1.nara.gov/White_House/EOP/OVP/html/telunion.html
  24. ^ http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/pioneers2d.html#al
  25. ^ http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/011394-press-release-on-vp-online-conferencing.htm
  26. ^ http://www.totic.org/nscp/demodoc/demo.html
  27. ^ http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/faculty.lecture/innovation/gore.html
  28. ^ http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore
  29. ^ http://sethf.com/gore/
  30. ^ http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,70773-0.html
  31. ^ http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/
  32. ^ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/09/14/politics/main233560.shtml
  33. ^ http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html
  34. ^ http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/gore.html
  35. ^ a b http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/mar/19gore.html
  36. ^ http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1980075,00.html
  37. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-05-04-gore-webby_x.htm
  38. ^ http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=833922
  39. ^ http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,14032,00.html?newsrellink
  40. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-23-gore_x.htm
  41. ^ http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/02/02-09gore-speech.html
  42. ^ "Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues". Retrieved 2006-09-01.
  43. ^ http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/12/220618.shtml
  44. ^ [3]
  45. ^ [4]
  46. ^ http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0509/09/nat4%2D309467.htm
  47. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gore Chronology was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  48. ^ http://quest.cjonline.com/stories/102700/gen_ease.shtml

Further reading

Official Websites

General sites

Film and television

Recent speeches by Al Gore

Al Gore's early career in journalism

Al Gore myths and media bias


Template:USRSBTemplate:USRSB
Preceded by U.S. senator (Class 2) from Tennessee
1985 – 1993
Served alongside: James R. Sasser 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Democratic Party vice presidential candidate
1992 (won), 1996 (won) 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Vice President of the United States
January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Democratic Party presidential nominee
2000 (lost) 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States order of precedence
as of 2007 		Succeeded by
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