Al Gore

Al Gore (1948- ), American politician and the 45th Vice-President of the United States (1993-2001). Albert Gore, Jr., was born in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1948. His father, Albert Gore, Sr., was a long-time Democratic congressman and senator from Tennessee. Gore graduated from Harvard University in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree in government. Although he opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War, he accepted induction into the United States Army and served from 1969 to 1971. While in Vietnam, Gore worked as a military reporter. Upon his return home, and until 1976, he worked as an investigative reporter and editorial writer for The Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper. During this time Gore operated a small farm and worked as a housebuilder and land developer. In 1976 he earned a law degree from Vanderbilt University, where he had also studied philosophy in 1971 and 1972. Gore married Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Aitcheson in 1970, and they had four children.

Gore was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1976. He was re-elected in 1978, 1980, and 1982. In 1984 he was elected to the US Senate. As a member of Congress, Gore earned a reputation as an authority on arms control and environmental issues. He pioneered efforts to clean up hazardous waste dumps and brought political attention to the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer. Gore ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton chose Gore as his running mate on the Democratic ticket. Clinton defeated the incumbent Republican president, George Bush, and Gore became vice-president in 1993. His work as Clinton’s deputy included numerous diplomatic trips abroad, meeting foreign heads of state, including Boris Yeltsin and Nelson Mandela.

Following a strong performance at the August 1996 Democratic Party convention, and Clinton’s re-election for his second and final presidential term in November 1996, Gore became the automatic choice for the next Democratic presidential candidate, and began positioning himself for the presidential campaign in the year 2000. In late 1997, however, Gore was placed under investigation for alleged illegal fund-raising during the 1996 election campaign. Though the investigation was curtailed in November 1998, some critics questioned his probity. He supported Clinton throughout the Monica Lewinsky case of 1998-1999, although he later condemned the episode that led to impeachment proceedings against the president as 'inexcusable', and Democratic successes in the November 1998 mid-term elections were credited in part to his campaigning. In January 1999 he officially began fundraising for his own presidential campaign, and officially declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in June, pledging to take his own “values of faith and family to the presidency to build an America that is not only better off but better”. By March 2000 he had easily secured the Democratic nomination after defeating former Democratic Senator Bill Bradley, his only opponent, in the early primaries. His main opponent in the presidential election in November 2000 was the Republican Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, son of the former president. Despite the booming economy, the election became one of the closest races ever, and although he won the popular vote he did not secure enough states to give him the required majority in the electoral college. Gore finally conceded the race in December after a number of legal challenges had culminated in the Supreme Court, which prevented any further recounts in the contested state of Florida.

In December 2002 Gore announced that he would not seek the Democrat nomination for the 2004 presidential election, effectively renouncing any ambition to occupy the White House. A year later he expressed his support for the campaign of the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, to be the Democrat presidential candidate in 2004 (the election was eventually lost by John Kerry). Gore devoted much of his time to international activism on the issue of global warming. A documentary about Gore’s campaign, An Inconvenient Truth, was awarded the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and in October of the same year Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.

Gore is the author of several books, including Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (1992) and The Assault on Reason (2007).