Through His Teeth - Quotations from Chairman Gore - Al Gore

National Review, May 22, 2000 by John J. Miller

"There has never been a time in this campaign when I have said something that I know to be untrue."

-Vice President Al Gore, January 26, 2000

BY now, pretty much everyone recognizes that Vice President Gore has a problem with the truth. In April, a pair of Boston Globe reporters wrote, "Gore has regularly promoted himself, and skewered his opponents, with embroidered, misleading, and occasionally false statements to a degree that even some of his allies concede is rare for a politician of his stature." That observation is hardly new. Twelve years ago, Michael Dukakis, campaigning for president against Gore, urged him: "Please get your facts straight. If you're going to be president of the United States, you'd better be accurate." Around the same time, Gore's communications director, Arlie Schardt, warned his boss in a memo: "Your main pitfall is exaggeration." Press secretary Mike Kopp once counseled Gore against "remarks that may be impossible to back up."

Now that Gore is the Democratic party's crown prince, Dukakis isn't elaborating on his earlier comments, and Schardt is spinning his away (no word from Kopp). But the impression remains: Al Gore is a liar. Bill Bradley said as much in one of their debates, when he asked Gore: "Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?"

Still, Gore allies are now hitting back. The Washington Monthly recently featured the vice president in a cover story entitled "He's No Pinocchio." Author Robert Parry blamed journalists for "publishing outright falsehoods about Gore." Mickey Kaus, a media reporter who is no Gore sycophant, also analyzed Gore's statements. He found only ten worthy of review, and rated a mere four of them as inexcusable lies. In a George magazine piece headed "Will the Biggest Liar Win?" Peter Keating suggested that Gore is no worse than George W. Bush-or any other pol, for that matter-in the truth-telling department.

We decided to perform our own assessment of Gore's veracity and came up with the following list of about 30 lies (or, if you like your language softer, untruths). To make the cut, each Gore tale had to meet two essential criteria. First, it had to be a clear, documented statement by Gore. Campaign ads count, on the assumption that he helped create them. Statements by Gore aides don't count, because Gore can't always control what comes out of their mouths, even when the lie looks like part of an overall strategy. So when Gore staffers told reporters earlier this year that the vice president wouldn't be meeting with Al Sharpton on the morning the two did meet secretly, Gore gets a pass. Yes, it was a lie. But by our strict standards, it was not a Gore lie.

Second, a lie must be an intentional deception. Gore has said many things he probably doesn't believe-Bill Clinton "will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents," to pick one example. But that's really an opinion, and an expression of rah-rah loyalty, so Gore again gets a pass.

Here, then, the list, in reverse chronological order:

TOBACCO #1

March 1, 2000; San Jose Mercury News

CLAIM: "It's not fair to say, 'Okay, after his sister died, he continued in the same relationship with the tobacco industry.' I did not. I did not. I began to confront them forcefully. I don't see the inconsistency there."

TRUTH: The same month Gore's sister died in 1984, he received a $1,000 speaking fee from U.S. Tobacco. The next year, he voted against cigarette and tobacco tax increases three times and favored a bill allowing major cigarette makers to purchase discounted tobacco. In the 1988 campaign, Gore bragged of his tobacco background: "I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put [tobacco] in the plant beds and transferred it. I've hoed it, I've dug in it, I've sprayed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn, and stripped it and sold it" (Newsday, 2-26-88).

TOBACCO #2

March 1, 2000; San Jose Mercury News

CLAIM: "My family had grown tobacco. It was never actually grown on my farm, but it was on my father's farm."

TRUTH: Gore had already admitted growing tobacco on his own farm: "On my farm, we stopped growing tobacco some time after Nancy died" (Cox News Service, 4-26-99). Also, Gore received federal subsidies for growing tobacco on his farm (Wall Street Journal, 8-10-95).

ABORTION #1

February 20, 2000; New York Times

CLAIM: Gore said he has "always, always, always" supported Roe v. Wade.

TRUTH: In 1977, Rep. Gore voted for the Hyde Amendment, which says that abortion "takes the life of an unborn child who is a living human being," and that there is no constitutional right to abortion. He cast many other votes favorable to the pro-life cause and earned an 84 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee.

CROWD ESTIMATE

February 4, 2000; New York Times

CLAIM: "We had a huge event with 3,000 people at Ohio State University."

TRUTH: "Officials at that rally said the room where it had taken place did not hold more than 1,200 people, and, given the area needed for the staging erected for the occasion, they estimated the crowd at 500," reported the Times.