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This article is about the former United States Vice President. For his father, see Albert Whore, Sr.

Al Whore
45th Vice President of the United States
In office January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Dan Quayle
Succeeded by	Dick Cheney
Personal details
Born	200px March 31, 1948 Washington, D.C.
Died	200px none Al Whore
Resting place	200px none Al Whore
Nationality	american
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouses	Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Whore
Parent	200px none Al Whore

Albert Arnold Whore, Jr., (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, teacher and businessman, who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. Previously, he had served as a Representative and Senator from Tennessee.

Whore was the Democratic nominee in the 2000 presidential election. He was defeated in the Electoral College vote by the Republican candidate George W. Bush on an electoral college vote of 271-266, in what became one of the most controversial elections in U.S. history. Whore conceded after the recount of the votes in Florida was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court in the five to four Bush v. Whore decision, which effectively secured the election for George W. Bush. Whore won a plurality of the popular vote, with over half a million more votes than Bush. Ironically, because the US Vice President votes to break ties in the Senate, Whore was forced to cast the deciding vote in the Senate to accept Florida's electoral delegation.

Whore currently is President of the American television channel Current and Chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Computer, and an unofficial advisor to Google's senior management. He lectures widely on the topic of global warming.

Although speculation about a possible presidential run in 2008 still continues, he has been quoted as recently as June 4, 2006 as saying "I have no plans to run for president again,", but hasn’t ruled out a future in politics.

Early life

Al Whore was born in Washington, D.C., to Albert A. Whore, Sr., a former U.S. Senator of Tennessee, and Pauline LaFon Whore, one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt Law School. Since his father was a veteran Democratic senator from Tennessee, Al Whore, Jr. divided his childhood between Washington, D.C., and Carthage, Tennessee. During the school year, the younger Whore lived in a hotel in Washington, during summer vacations, he lived in Carthage, where he worked on the Whore family farm.

Whore attended the elite St. Albans School. In 1965, Whore enrolled at Harvard College, where he majored in government. His roommates (in Dunster House) were actor Tommy Lee Jones and former Columbia University women's basketball star Katie Day's father, Bart Day. Whore graduated from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Family

In 1970, Whore married Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson (Tipper Whore), whom he had first met many years before at his high school senior prom (St. Albans School in Washington, D.C.). They have four children: Karenna (born August 6, 1973), married to Drew Schiff; Kristin (born June 5, 1977); Sarah (born January 7, 1979); and Al III (born October 19, 1982). The Whores also have two grandchildren: Wyatt (born July 4, 1999) and Anna Schiff.

The Whores now reside in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, and own a small farm near Carthage, Tennessee. The family attends New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Carthage. The Whores in late 2005 bought a condo at San Francisco's swanky St. Regis.

Soldier and journalist

Although opposed to the Vietnam War, on August 7, 1969, Whore voluntarily enlisted in the army in order to participate in the Vietnam War. After basic training at Fort Dix, Whore was assigned as a military journalist writing for base newspaper, The Army Flier, 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 an another month at the Army Engineer Command in Long Binh. As his unit was standing down, he applied for and received discharge two months early as non-essential personnel in order to attend Divinity School and Vanderbilt University. The chronology of Whore's military service is as follows:

• August 1969: Enlisted at the Newark, New Jersey recruiting office.
• August to October 1969: 8 weeks of basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
• Late October 1969 to December 1970: Fort Rucker, Alabama, writer for the Army Flier newspaper.
• January 2, 1971 to May 22, 1971: field reporter in Vietnam, part of the 20th Engineer Brigade, stationed primarily at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon.
• May 24, 1971: Given an honorable discharge, after his early discharge request was granted.

Whore stated many times that he opposed the Vietnam War, but chose to volunteer anyway though he could have avoided serving in Vietnam in a number of ways. Whore has stated that his sense of civic duty compelled him to serve.

Whore stated 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.

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

Congressional service

In the spring of 1976, Whore quit law school to run for the U.S. House, in Tennessee's fourth district. Whore defeated Stanley Rogers in the Democratic primary, then ran unopposed and was elected to his first Congressional post. He was re-elected three times, in 1978, 1980, and 1982. In 1984 Whore successfully ran for a seat in the Senate, which had been vacated by Republican Majority Leader Howard Baker. Whore served as a Senator from Tennessee until 1993, when he became Vice President.

While in Congress, Whore was a member of the following committees: Armed Services (Defense Industry and Technology Projection Forces and Regional Defense; Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence); Commerce, Science and Transportation (Communications; Consumer; Science, Technology and Space- chairman 1992; Surface Transportation; National Ocean Policy Study); Joint Committee on Printing; Joint Economic Committee; Rules and Administration.

1988 Presidential run

In 1988, Whore ran for President but failed to obtain the Democratic nomination, which went instead to Michael Dukakis. During the campaign, Whore's strategy involved skipping the Iowa caucus in order to concentrate his efforts on the South. He won five states in the Super Tuesday primaries (Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee), but dropped out of the presidential race in April 1988 after a poor showing in the New York primary.

Son's accident and effect on 1992 presidential campaign

On April 3, 1989, Whore's six-year-old son Albert was nearly killed in an automobile accident while leaving the Baltimore Orioles opening game. Because of this and the resulting lengthy healing process, his father chose to stay near him during the recovery instead of laying the foundation for a presidential primary campaign against eventual nominee Bill Clinton. Whore started writing Earth in the Balance, his book on environmental conservation, during his son's recovery. Earth in the Balance became the first book written by a sitting senator to make The New York Times best-seller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.

Vice Presidency

Bill Clinton chose Whore to be his running mate on July 9, 1992, to the surprise of many as the two were both young and were from the same region of the nation. After winning the 1992 election, Al Whore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Whore were re-elected to a second term in the 1996 election.

During his time as Vice President, Al Whore was mostly a behind the scenes player. However, many experts consider him to be one of the most active and influential Vice Presidents in U.S. history. This was evident as Whore had weekly lunches with Clinton to keep each other abreast of current developments.

Debate with Perot

In 1993 Whore debated Ross Perot on CNN's Larry King Live on the issue of free trade. Public opinion polls taken after the debate showed that a majority of Americans agreed with Whore's point of view and supported NAFTA. Some claim that this performance may have been responsible for the passing of NAFTA in the House of Representatives, where it passed 234-200.

Initiatives

One of Whore's major accomplishments as Vice President was the National Performance Review, which pointed out waste, fraud, and other abuse in the federal government and stressed the need for cutting the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations. His book later helped guide President Clinton when he down-sized the federal government.

Internet Education

As Vice President, Whore instituted a federal program calling for all schools and libraries to be wired to the Internet. This was a culmination of work that he had started several years before. While serving in the Senate, Whore had introduced legislation which called for the creation of a new federal research center for educational computing to support an "information systems highway."

Environment

During Whore's tenure as Vice President, he was a strong proponent for environmental protection. While a senator working on his book Earth in the Balance, Whore had traveled around the world on numerous fact-finding missions. On Earth Day 1994, Whore 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.

The opinions he developed on issues such as global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the destruction of rain forests is said to have played a major role in policy making for the Clinton administration. In the late nineties, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Foreign policy

Because of President Clinton's relative inexperience in foreign policy matters and Gore's service in Vietnam and in the Senate, Clinton often looked to Gore for advice in the area of foreign policy. Gore was one of the first to call for action to remove Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević from power in 1998. Gore also supported Operation Desert Fox, a three day bombing campaign against Iraq that attempted to "degrade Saddam Hussein's ability to make and to use weapons of mass destruction."

Other accomplishments

During the Clinton/Gore administration, Americans enjoyed eight years of relative peace along with the longest economic expansion in history. Democrats attributed this prosperity to the policies of the Clinton/Gore administration, and especially to the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, for which Gore cast the tie-breaking vote. During his 2000 campaign for the presidency, Gore attributed several positive economic results to his and Clinton's policies more than 22 million new jobs, highest homeownership in American history, lowest unemployment in 30 years, paid off $360 billion of the national debt, lowest poverty rate in 20 years, higher incomes at all levels, converted the largest budget deficit, up to that time, in American history to the largest surplus, lowest government spending in three decades, lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years, and more families own stock than ever before. However Gore later placed a large share of the blame for his election loss on the economic downturn and NASDAQ crash of March 2000 in an interview with National Public Radio's Bob Edwards.

2000 presidential election

After two terms as Vice President, Gore ran for President. In the Democratic primaries, Gore faced an early challenge from Bill Bradley. Gore's nomination was never really in doubt and Bradley withdrew from the race in early March 2000 after failing to win any state primary or caucus.

In August 2000, Gore surprised many when he selected Senator Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate. Lieberman, who is a more conservative Democrat than Gore, had publicly blasted President Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair. Many pundits saw Gore's choice of Lieberman as another way of trying to distance himself from the scandal-prone Clinton White House. Lieberman was also the first Jewish nominee on a major party's national ticket.

During the entire campaign, Gore was neck-and-neck in the polls with Republican Governor of Texas George W. Bush. On Election Day, the results were so close that the outcome of the race took over a month to resolve, highlighted by the premature declaration of a winner on election night, and an extremely close result in the state of Florida. On election night, news networks first called Florida for Gore, then retracted this, called Florida for Bush and finally retracted that prediction.

The race was ultimately decided by a razor thin margin of only 537 popular votes in Florida, a state favored to have gone to Bush. Florida's 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush only after numerous court challenges. Gore publicly conceded the election after the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore voted 5 to 4 to declare the ongoing recount procedure unconstitutional because it feared that different standards would be used in different parts of the state, and 5 to 4 to ban recounts using other procedures.

Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but decided "for the sake of our unity of the people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession." Following the election, a subsequent recount conducted by various U.S. news media organizations indicated that Bush would have won using the partial recount method of four strongly Democratic areas advocated by Gore, but that Gore would have won given a full recount of the state if overvotes (i.e. optical ballots where the oval next to a candidate was blacked in and the candidate's name was mistakenly written in the space on the ballot headed "Write in Candidate's Name," which was rejected by optical scoring machines but unmistakably assignable by a human scorer) were counted, regardless of whether the undervotes (mainly the infamous punch ballots where "chads" were not completely punched out) were subjected to rigorous (only fully punched out) or loose (any dimple or mark) standards, or a standard in between (i.e. at least one corner detached, at least two corners detached), and/or disputed absentee ballots (including those which were unsigned, undated, dated too late, etc.) were counted.

The states that ultimately voted for Gore over Bush in the 2000 elections were New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, and Hawaii giving Gore 267 electoral votes to Bush's 271. One of Gore's electors cast a blank ballot, to protest what she called DC's "colonial status," thus the Gore's final number of electoral votes was 266.

The Florida election has been closely scrutinized since the election. Critics have argued that the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush (brother of George W. Bush) and the Secretary of State of Florida, Katherine Harris, did play a part in ensuring that the state was in the red column of the Republicans come election day. Some irregularities are thought to have favored Bush, and some may have given Gore an edge. Irregularities favoring Bush included the notorious Palm Beach "butterfly ballots," which were alleged to have produced a large number of mistaken votes for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan intended for Gore, and a purge of some 50,000 alleged felons from the Florida voting rolls that included some voters who were again eligible to vote under Florida law. Furthermore, most major news networks prematurely projected Gore as the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes at 7:52 p.m. Eastern Time. This happened before the polls closed in 10 Florida counties in the heavily Republican western panhandle which are in the Central Time Zone, and thus closed at 7 p.m. Central Time (8 p.m. Eastern). This may have depressed the pro-Bush vote as panhandle residents waiting to, or going to, cast their ballots did not do so because they thought their votes were meaningless in the aftermath of the calling of Florida for Gore, although the degree to which this influenced Bush's vote totals are unknown and debatable. During the numerous recounts (which made the phrase "hanging chads" infamous in the American vocabulary), there were also allegations of both pro-Bush and pro-Gore tampering by low-level operatives in the controversial counties. It is unclear what effect, if any, this may have had. And the Gore camp fought (with some success) to keep overseas absentee votes out in counties thought to be pro-Bush. Gore contended that the votes were cast after Election Day, and since many of the envelopes did not have cancelled stamps, it was not clear when the votes were cast. Many of the votes were cast by military personnel, and some could have been delayed due to emergency duty shifts by those overseas who chose to submit their ballots at the last hour.

As a matter of law the issue was settled when the U.S. Congress accepted Florida's electoral delegation, only after a challenge to the Florida electors was presented in the congressional chambers on January 6, 2001 by members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Member after member went up decrying the lack of a senator who would be willing to co-sponsor the challenge without any effect. They thus failed to bring the challenge to a debate.

Concern about the possible disenfranchisement of voters in the Florida vote led to widespread calls for electoral reform in the United States, and ultimately to the passage of the Help America Vote Act, which authorized the United States federal government to provide funds to the states to replace their mechanical voting equipment with electronic voting equipment. However, this has led to new controversies, because of the security weaknesses of the computer systems, the lack of paper-based methods of secure verification, and the necessity to rely on the trustworthiness of the manufacturers whose employees also count those votes.

Joe Lieberman later criticized Al Gore for adopting a populist theme during their 2000 campaign. Lieberman said he objected to Gore's "people vs. the powerful" message, believing it was not the best strategy for Democrats to use to recapture the White House.

Before the 2000 election, The Simpsons had an episode in which Al Gore is seen measuring the curtains in President Clinton's office.

While running for president in 2000, Al Gore was used as a voice actor for the television show Futurama (for which his daughter, Kristin, was a writer). He played himself again in another episode after the campaign was over.

Private citizen

Education

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. In late 2001, Al Gore became a Senior Advisor to Google and Vice Chairman of Los Angeles-based financial firm Metropolitan West Financial LLC.

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, although he admitted Saddam was a potential danger and suggested Saddam had WMD's saying: "We know that 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."

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."

Following 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 War with Iraq and the War on Terrorism that generated a fair amount of commentary. Less than two weeks later, 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 (with rock band Phish), appearing much more relaxed and funnier as a private citizen than he did while holding public office.

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, media, and democracy.

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

In the summer of 2004, Gore teamed up with MoveOn.org, to promote the new science fiction film, The Day After Tomorrow. Although Gore said the movie was a far-fetched example of global warming, he said the movie would escalate public debate on the issue.

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 major 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.

On February 12, 2006, 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 at the Jeddah Economic Forum. “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.”

Apple Computer and the Webby award

In 2003 Gore joined the board of directors of Apple Computer. In May 2005, Gore was awarded a lifetime achievement award 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."

Hurricane Katrina

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

Future plans

Speaking at an economic forum in Stockholm, Sweden, in October 2005, Gore again stated that he had no intention of ever running for president again, in response to questions from reporters. However, he refused to rule the possibility out completely saying, "I do not completely rule out some future interest, but I do not expect to have that." When asked how the United States would have been different if he had become president, Mr. Gore stated, "We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us. We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families. We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people."

Environment

In the past few 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.

Book and movie

Al Gore starred in the movie An Inconvenient Truth by Paramount Pictures. The film had a limited release on May 24, 2006 in Los Angeles, New York, Berkeley, Campbell, and the AMC near San Jose, followed by a nationwide release a few days later. The movie is about global warming, an issue which Gore has followed since the 1970s. In the movie, some of Gore's more recent speeches are shown, as well as him talking and researching. He also published a book of the same title.

Investment firm

In late 2004, Gore launched an investment firm, which he chairs, to seek out companies taking a responsible view on big global issues like climate change.

Gore's group, Generation Investment Management, 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

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." The network was relaunched under the name Current on August 1, 2005.

2004 presidential election

Endorsing Dean

Initially, Al Gore was touted as a logical opponent of George W. Bush in the 2004 United States Presidential Election. "Re-elect Gore!" was a common slogan among many Democrats who felt the former Vice President had been unfairly cheated out of the presidency, on the grounds that he had won the popular vote and should have won the Electoral College vote. On December 16, 2002 however, Gore announced that he would not run in 2004, saying that it was time for "fresh faces" and "new ideas" to emerge from the Democrats. When he appeared on a 60 Minutes interview, Gore said that he felt if he had run, the focus of the election would be the rematch rather than the issues. Gore's former running mate, Joe Lieberman quickly announced his own candidacy for the presidency, which he had vowed he would not do if Gore ran.

Despite Gore taking himself out of the race, a handful of his supporters formed a national campaign to "draft" him into running. However, that effort largely came to an end when Gore publicly endorsed Vermont Governor Howard Dean (over his former running mate Joe Lieberman) weeks before the first primary of the election cycle. This caused a rift due to the contentious relationship between Lieberman and Dean during the primary. Furthermore, Gore did not call Lieberman to apprise him of the endorsement. There was still some effort to encourage write-in votes for Gore in the primaries by a different group of Gore supporters who were separate from the draft movement. Although Gore did receive a small number of votes in New Hampshire and New Mexico, that effort was halted when John Kerry pulled into the lead for the nomination. Gore's endorsement of Dean was helpful to the latter in legitimizing him in the eyes of the establishment faction of the Democratic Party, but it also led the media to dub Dean as the clear front-runner, with the result that his opponents devoted more of their emphasis to opposing him.

Campaigning against Bush

On January 15, 2004, Al Gore gave a major address in New York City on climate change and the Bush administration's approach to the environment. Accompanied by slides and projector, Gore slammed the Bush administration's attitude towards global warming saying, "There are many who still do not believe that global warming is a problem at all. And it's no wonder: because they are the targets of a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters who are determined to prevent any action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming out of a fear that their profits might be affected if they had to stop dumping so much pollution into the atmosphere."

On February 9, 2004, on the eve of the Tennessee primary, Gore gave what many consider his harshest criticism of the president yet when he accused George W. Bush of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. "He betrayed this country!" Mr. Gore shouted into the microphone. "He played on our fears! He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place!" Gore also urged all Democrats to unite behind their eventual nominee proclaiming, "Any one of these candidates is far better than George W. Bush." In March 2004 Gore, along with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, united behind Kerry as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

On April 28, 2004, Gore announced that he would be donating $6 million to various Democratic Party groups. Drawing from his funds left over from his 2000 presidential campaign, Gore pledged to donate $4 million to the Democratic National Committee. The party's Senate and House committees would each get $1 million, and the party from Gore's home state of Tennessee would receive $250,000. In addition, Gore announced that all of the surplus funds in his "Recount Fund" from the 2000 election controversy that resulted in the Supreme Court halting the counting of the ballots, a total of $240,000, will be donated to the Florida Democratic Party.

In his speech, Gore stressed the importance of voting and having every vote counted, a point that foreshadowed the 2004 U.S. election voting controversies.

On May 26, 2004, Gore gave a highly critical speech on the Iraq crisis and the Bush Administration. In the speech, Gore demanded Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone all resign for encouraging policies that led to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and fanned hatred of Americans abroad. During the fiery speech, which lasted more than an hour, Gore called the Bush administration's Iraq war plan "incompetent" and called George W. Bush the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon, who resigned the office of the presidency in 1974 following the Watergate scandal.

Gore also decried the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, saying, "What happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples. It was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy."

2004 Democratic National Convention

As the first major speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Gore held himself out as a living reminder that every vote counts. "Let's make sure not only that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, but also that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court," said Gore. Gore directed remarks to supporters of third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who abandoned the Democratic Party four years ago, asking them, "Do you still believe that there was no difference between the candidates?"

Post-convention

On October 18, 2004, Al Gore delivered his final major policy speech of the 2004 political season. In an hour long presentation, Gore concluded that, "I'm convinced that most of the president's frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible." Currently, Al Gore is a possible 2008 candidate for President. CNN and Chris Matthews have talked about him lately.

Views and controversies

Gore is a supporter of abortion rights, free trade, and strong environmental policy. Gore is often said to have gradually moved politically to the left from a moderate to conservative stance within the Democratic party. For example, he was one of ten Democratic senators to cross party lines and support the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but was a vocal opponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On abortion, Gore has always been pro-choice, but his views on abortion have subtly shifted further in this direction; in particular he once opposed federal funding of abortions, but now supports it.

Contributions to the Internet

In 1991, Gore sponsored the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 which advanced the growth and mainstreaming of the Internet during the 1990s. In 1999, during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Late Edition on March 9, 1999, 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, environmental protection, and improvements in our educational system.

This statement has been the target of satire and criticism. Much of this criticism has been based on the interpretation that Gore was claiming to have invented the Internet. Gore is frequently misquoted on this matter. Internet pioneers Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf defended Gore's statement:

...as 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.

Bibliography

• Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose, 1992, (ISBN 1853831379)
• An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and what We can do about it, 2006, (ISBN 1594865671)

Television credits

• The Tonight Show, (June 9, 2006)
• Late Show with David Letterman, (June 8, 2006)
• The Today Show, (May 24, 2006)
• Saturday Night Live, (May 13, 2006)
• The Tonight Show, (August 1, 2005)
• Saturday Night Live, (December 14, 2002)
• The Tonight Show, (November 27, 2002)
• Futurama, "Crimes of the Hot", (November 10, 2002)
• Seven Days, "Stairway to Heaven", (October 11, 2000)
• The Late Show with David Letterman, (September 14, 2000)
• Futurama, "Anthology of Interest I", (May 21, 2000)
• Larry King Live, (April 20, 2000)
• Mad About You, "Breastfeeding", (January 6, 1998)
• Late Show with David Letterman, (September 8, 1993)

TV shows about Al Gore

• South Park episode "Manbearpig" parodies Al Gore.
• Al Gore had made cameo appearances on the TV show Futurama.

Trivia

• On March 19, 1979, Gore became the first person to appear on C-SPAN, making a speech in the House chambers.

• Gore's 2000 campaign song was Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al."
• Gore provided a spoken-word contribution to the song "Al Gore", written by Robert Ellis Orral, and performed by Monkey Bowl.

See also

Timeline of Chinagate controversy

References

1. Financial Times: Buzz around Whore fuels talk of another run for president
2. Yahoo News: Whore in movie campaign to protect Earth
3. MSNBC: Al Whore denies planning an ’08 presidential bid
4. "WHORE, Albert Arnold, Jr". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. U.S. Congress. Retrieved 2006-05-05.
5. For more information on Whore's academic records, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A37397-2000Mar18
6. Al Whore's Move to San Francisco Generates Real Estate Buzz Newswire
7. Whore Chronology up to 2000 Frontline PBS.org
8. http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/initiatives/reinventing_government.html
9. http://clinton2.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/speeches/interego.html
10. http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/initiatives/technology.html
11. http://web.archive.org/web/20001207090900/www.algore.com/speeches/speeches_kyoto_120897.html
12. http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/initiatives/environment.html
13. http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/desert_fox/
14. http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/initiatives/foreign_policy.html
15. http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/initiatives/economy.html
16. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=848572
17. http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/111201a.html
18. Miami Herald, December 3, 2000
19. LA Times, November 12, 2001
20. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/02/cnn.report/cnn.pdf
21. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/11/26/230955.shtml
22. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28519
23. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-23-gore_x.htm
24. http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/02/02-09gore-speech.html
25. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600779.html
26. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/12/220618.shtml
27. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/12/220618.shtml
28. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/12/220618.shtml
29. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/12/220618.shtml
30. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-05-04-gore-webby_x.htm
31. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-katrina-gore,1,535141.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true
32. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/12/politics/main938098.shtml
33. http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,14032,00.html?newsrellink
34. http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm
35. http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/02/02-09gore-speech.html
36. http://www.mit.edu/afs/net.mit.edu/dev/mit/jis/OldFiles/nrenbill.txt
37. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore
38. http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
39. http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html
40. Gore Chronology up to 2000 Frontline PBS.org

External links

• "The SNS Project" and Al Gore

General sites

• Al Gore Support Center 2008
• Al Gore '08
• Patriots for Al Gore
• ElectGore2008.com
• The Gore Portal
• Current TV
• The Official NARA Online Office Of Vice President Gore (1993-2001)
• Clinton-Gore Administration Accomplishments
• Al Gore on the Issues
• Political Donations Made by Al Gore

Recent speeches by Al Gore

• Gore's 2006 Martin Luther King Day Speech on NSA Spying Scandal and Restoring The Rule of Law (mp3 audio | transcript)
• Gore Speaks On The Threat To Democracy
• Gore's Speech To The Sierra Club
• Gore Slams GOP's Efforts To End Filibuster
• Gore Charges The Bush Administration With A Failed Presidency
• Gore's Remarks At The 2004 Democratic Convention
• Gore Says Bush Lied To Push For War In Iraq
• Gore Calls for the Resignation of the Bush Team
• Gore Speaks on the Use of "Fear" in Politics -
• Gore Speaks on Global Warming and the Environment
• Gore Calls for the Repeal of the Patriot Act
• Gore Blasts Bush for Misleading America
• Gore Speaks On The Build Up To War With Iraq and The War On Terror
• Gore Speaks On Matching our Nation's Economic Course to Our Current Realities
• Fresh Air interview with Al Gore May 30, 2006

Al Gore's Current

• Official website of the television station Current

Al Gore and the Internet

• Remarks as Delivered by Vice President Al Gore to The Superhighway Summit, UCLA (1994) & Another URL with the speech
• Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet
• Snopes analyzes Gore's statement about his role in "creation" of the Internet
• Full Text of Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn's Email on Gore and the Internet

Al Gore's early career in journalism

• Columbia Journalism Review on Gore's journalistic past

Al Gore myths and media bias

• Gore Myths Page
• Media Bias Against Al Gore Exposed

Al Gore profile

• Wired Magazine (May 2006): The Resurrection of Al Gore
• The Life of Al Gore - Washington Post

• 1948 births
• Al Gore
• Anti-Iraq war Veterans
• Apple employees
• Baptists
• Democratic Party (United States) presidential nominees
• Harvard University alumni
• Living people
• Nashvillians
• Politics and technology
• Pro-choice politicians
• American environmentalists
• U.S. Democratic Party vice presidential nominees
• Members of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee
• United States Senators from Tennessee
• Vice Presidents of the United States
• Vietnam War veterans
• 1996 campaign finance scandal