The real Al Gore

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 12, 1998 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

The vice president has had his eye on the ball ever since he bounced on the knee of his senator father. Now the Clinton scandals may be speeding the pace.

He is the "wild and crazy" Macarena Man, the stiff-as-a-board orator and then the pulpit-pounding Baptist addressing black leaders. He is the fundraising solicitor in chief and best friend of Buddhist monks, the intellectual with a passion for learning and the guy who earned fame in high school for his ability to balance a broomstick on his nose. He is the Jolly Green Giant of environmentalism and the tobacco farmer who for political gain denounces his crop and damns his neighbors as poisoners of youth. To some, he is the good son to Bill Clinton's bad boy.

So who is this fellow, this heir apparent always in position to succeed sooner rather than later? And might we want Al Gore as president at the end of this long decade of scandal?

To find out, Insight conducted a comprehensive review of public documents and talked with Gore friends and foes to assemble this picture of the man who would be ... president. The image that emerged was surprisingly unfocused, blurred at the edges, with troubling ghosts surrounding a political figure struggling to emerge from the shadows of two very powerful men at once generations apart and blood brothers in the body politic.

We start at the beginning -- March 31, 1948, when Albert Gore Sr.'s wife, Pauline (nee LaFon), gives birth to a future vice president. A hard-nosed Democratic congressman from Tennessee, the senior Gore brought politics to the family table like an oral gazette, engaging in highly partisan policy monologues during meals and providing young Gore with a front-row seat to Washington's most popular blood sport.

First elected in 1938, Gore Sr. never entertained the idea of losing a campaign. From 1938 until 1970 he held on in Washington like a confident son awaiting a legacy.

After 14 years in the House, the elder Gore was elected to the Senate where he earned the respect of his colleagues as an astute politician with a hearty grasp of issues. By 1970, however, the veteran campaigner was a leading Southern liberal and vulnerable to a challenge by young William Brock, conservative son of a wealthy candy manufacturer, in a combative race inflamed by fury about the war in Vietnam. As his father was being politically flayed in the Volunteer State for his antiwar stance, the younger Gore displayed his political loyalty.

Ignoring his personal disapproval of the war, young Gore did not duck military responsibility like many from prestigious families and good schools. He served in Vietnam with the 20th Engineer Brigade as an Army journalist. Later, in an attempt to justify such actions, Gore explained: "Ironically the most effective way I could oppose the war was to volunteer to be part of it and thereby marginally strengthen his [Gore Sr.] hand in his reelection campaign," Thus Gore would have us believe his appearance in uniform for his father's 1970 campaign ads was both a matter of filial loyalty and a sacrifice for peace.

Alas for peace, however, the ads were to no avail. Gore Sr. was defeated by Brock.

Having devoted so much to his father's cause, the loss had a powerful effect on young Gore. "Well, obviously he was very engaged in his father's career and his father's defeat in 1970 was a traumatic defeat," says Michael Barone of Reader's Digest and coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics.

The senator's son who grew up at the elegant Fairfax Hotel and for nine years attended the tony St. Alban's School for Boys in Northwest Washington, where he earned the moniker "Gorf," was graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 1969 before serving as a soldier-journalist during the years 1969-71.

On May 19, 1970, Gore married his college sweetheart, Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Aitcheson. He entered Vanderbilt School of Religion and later Vanderbilt's law school but was graduated from neither. Instead, he returned to journalism. During his 1971 to 1976 stint at The Tennessean in Nashville, Gore made a name for himself covering city hall and shedding light on corrupt local government before entering politics in 1976 when his father's successor in the House retired.

During his four House terms Gore established himself in his father's image as a pragmatic politician. But his career took off shortly after he pushed for House proceedings to be televised and in March 1979 delivered the first speech broadcast from the floor of the House.

When Howard Baker retired from his Senate seat in 1984, the big-time beckoned. Gore seized the opportunity and from the upper chamber began the drive for even larger political prizes. He exposed the cutbacks at the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, or NASA, which were partly responsible for the crash of the Challenger space shuttle. And taking a lead from his wife, he led the battle to label pop records containing obscene lyrics.

His pushiness gained public notice, but not every senator appreciated the abrasive style which Gore had adopted from his father. One former Senate committee staffer tells Insight, "At the time he was not the most senior, you had some veteran senators who thought he was too long-winded. For instance, [South Carolina Democrat Fritz] Hollings was not always on the same wavelength"