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Revision as of 05:52, 12 October 2002 by 216.229.90.232 (talk) (academic record)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Vice President of the United States 1993-2001 during Bill Clinton's presidency.
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. is the son of veteran Democratic Senator Albert Gore, Sr. of Tennessee. Gore, Sr. grew up in rural Tennessee, but his son was raised in a hotel in Washington, D.C. and spent summers in Carthage Tennessee.
Gore attended Harvard, but according to the Washington Post, he rarely got grades better than D's and C's, including a C minus in introductory economics, a D in one science course, and a C-plus in another. The Post went on to describe Gore's sophomore year: " the year Gore's classmates remember him spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana."
In 1971, Gore enrolled in Vanderbilt Divinity School where he failed five of the eight classes he took over three semesters. He also attended Vanderbilt Law School for a brief time, but eventually dropped out.
Gore, Jr. could have used his father's connections to avoid serving in Vietnam. He did avoid combat, which resulted in allegations that his famous father's influence had kept him away from the front lines. He worked in Vietnam as an Army war correspondent and was not always out of danger, however.
Gore told the Washington Post on February 3, 1988, that he "was shot at... I spent most of my time in the field.". Then told the Los Angeles Times on October 15, 1999, "I carried an M-16... I pulled my turn on the perimeter at night and walked through the elephant grass, and I was fired upon." According to fellow combat photographer, Alan Leo, Gore was protected from dangerous situations, at the request of Brigadere General K.B. Cooper, the 20th Engineer Brigade’s Commander. Leo said that Gore's trips into the field were generally pretty safe. "I could have worn a tuxedo" said Leo.
He later spent several years as a reporter in his native Tennessee.
He was a Senator from Tennessee before he became Vice President.
He wrote an environmental conservation book called Earth in the Balance.
He ran for the office of President of the United States and was defeated by George W. Bush in 2000. See also: US Election 2000
He never claimed to have invented the Internet. The exact quote from a CNN interview: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
This statement referred to his introduction around 1990 of a bill designed to fund the creation of an "information systems highway" for education. The bill itself, and the phrase "information superhighway" in particular, were definite factors in advancing the growth of the Internet. Gore, however, never managed during the long campaign to make this point clear, even when directly teased by George W. Bush during their debates.
Critics point out that the U.S. ] actually created the Internet, originally called ARPANET, in 1969. Gore, only 21 years old at the time, was eight years away from being elected to Congress.
Other criticisms
- During the 2000 presidential campaign, Gore was attacked by environmentalists for owning (indirectly through his father's estate) several thousand shares of Occidental Petroleum Corporation. Occidental Petroleum angered environmentalists by trying to open a new oil/gas drilling field in Colombia.
- Gore ran as a traditional Democratic liberal and made little effort to ally himself with the successful centrist positions of the Clinton Administration, so eager was he to dissociate himself from Clinton's scandals.
- Gore was considered to have a stiff and contrived personality that set people's teeth on edge. During the 2000 campaign, he often sounded condescending during the debates, sometimes even sighing impatiently at his opponent's answers. This behavior was satarized on NBC's Saturday Night Live. Rumor has it that Gore's advisors forced him to watch the SNL sketch so he would know what not to do in the next debate.
- Gore made a large number of innacurate or misleading statements during the 2000 campaign, including a story about 79 year-old Winifred Skinner, "In order to pay for her prescription drug benefits, she has to go out seven days a week, several hours a day, picking up cans." Gore said during the October 3, 2000 debate. In reality, Skinner did not need to pick up cans to pay for her prescription drugs, she did it as a hobby. On another accasion, he told a group of labor union members that his mother used to sing the "Look for the Union Label" commercial jingle to him when he was a baby. In reality, Gore was 27 years old when the song was written.
Positive points
- Gore had a much more explicit platform and set of programs and was much more forthcoming about his plans than was his opponent.
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