Al Gore - A Tremendous Politician And Environmentalist

Al Gore’s full name is Albert Arnold Gore Jr., and he was born on 31st March 1948 in Washington D.C. If anyone is still wondering “who is Al Gore”, he is a former (45th) Vice President of the United States. He held the post from 1993 till 2001. He worked under the presidency of Bill Clinton and was a democratic (Al Gore political party) nominee for the 2000 presidential elections. He lost to George W.Bush by a close margin where a recount of votes had to be done in Florida. The Presidential election of 2000 has been one of the closest races for the presidency in history. 

Al Gore has been an active environmentalist and a champion of awareness of global warming. Amongst Al Gore awards, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 is the most outstanding award. His efforts have also been in the field of writing, and he wrote and made a documentary of his book “An Inconvenient Truth”. Gore founded The Climate Reality project and is also the chairman of this project. This is a nonprofit project geared towards solving climate-related crises.

This article will take you through the life history of Al Gore and tell you how young Al Gore was, about the Al Gore political party, Al Gore family, Al Gore age, and most importantly Al Gore works.

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Young Al Gore’s Childhood and Education

Al Gore’s father was Al Gore senior (D), who was a former representative and senator in Tennessee, and his mother’s name was Pauline LaFon Gore. 

• Al Gore finished his graduation in 1965 from St. Albans High School in Washington, D.C.

• He then went to study at the prestigious Harvard University and passed out in 1969.

• After Harvard, a young Al Gore enlisted in the army and served in the Vietnam war from 1969 till 1971. He worked as a private and army journalist.

• He came back home from the war and started working as an investigative reporter for a newspaper in Tennessee called “The Tennessean”. He worked there from 1971 till 1976 and at the same time studied law and philosophy at the Vanderbilt University School of Law from 1974 till 1976.

• He began his formal political career by leaving law school in 1976 and making his first bid for the elected office.

Al Gore’s Family

Al Gore married his childhood sweetheart Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Aitcheson on May 19th, 1970 in Washington. He had four children from her:

• Karenna Gore

• Kristin Carlson Gore

• Sarah LaFon Gore

• Albert Arnold Gore III

Gore and Tipper mutually separated in June 2010 right after buying a new home. They announced this separation via an email to their friends.

Al Gore’s Political Career

Al Gore was an elected official for twenty-four years. He won the elections in 1976 to the U.S. House of Representatives and got re-elected three times i.e., in 1978, 1980, and 1982.

• He won a seat in the Senate in 1984 and served as a U.S. Senator from 1985 till 1993.

• He was nominated as a Democratic presidential candidate in 1988 but was unsuccessful.

• In 1991 Al Gore was one of the ten Democratic senators who voted for the authorization of using the U.S. military force in the Persian Gulf War, against Iraq.

• In 1992 Bill Clinton, who was a Democratic presidential nominee that year, chose Al Gore to be his running mate. Clinton won the 1992 presidential elections against Republican candidate George Bush. Gore became the 45th Vice President of the United States and served the country at that post for eight years.

• It was Gore with whose help the Clinton administration secured congressional passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. With this agreement, most trade barriers and tariffs on products and services that passed between Canada, United States, and Mexico were eliminated.

• In 1996, both Clinton and Gore got re-elected for a second term by defeating Republicans who were led by Bob Dole.

Gore’s Attempt At Presidency in 1999

In June of 1999, Al Gore announced his candidacy for the U.S. Presidency. Gore was a moderate democrat, and his campaign for presidency focused on health care, economy, and education. On controversial issues, Gore mostly supported the views of the Democratic party where he favored women's rights for abortion, higher levels of restrictions on guns, etc. But his stance on the death penalty was against the party’s traditional stand. Gore supported the death penalty. Gore aggressively took measures for environment protection and wrote his ideas in his book “Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit” which came out in 1992.

• Gore easily won the Democratic presidential nomination but trailed in most public opinion polls till he selected his vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman was the first Jewish American who got a national presidential ticket.

• The campaign progressed with very close polls.

• On election night, the vote count clearly indicated that the election outcome depended on the 25 electoral votes of Florida. Florida’s votes were going to give a marginal majority and declare the winner of the presidential race.

• When TV networks announced Bush as the winner in Florida, Gore called for Bush to concede.

• Later in the evening, the continuing returns from Florida indicated that Gore was closing the gap with Bush. So, Gore called Bush to withdraw his concession and decided to cancel his concession speech.

• A mandatory recount in Florida showed that Gore trailed by less than 1000 votes. Gore then sought manual ballot count in southern Florida’s heavily democratic counties.

• The election remained unresolved for five weeks as the federal courts and Florida state court weighed arguments of both Bush and Gore campaigns.

• Finally, Gore secured a 4-3 victory in the Florida court, which was quite controversial, and a statewide manual recount of around 45,000 undervotes was ordered. Undervotes are the ballots recorded by machines that did not clearly express the presidential vote.

• The Bush campaign then appealed in the U.S. Supreme court that a quick recount can not be fairly done unless extensive ground rules were established.

• The court then issued a 5-4 in Bush’s favor which reversed the Florida Supreme court’s order for a recount. The presidency was then awarded to George Bush.

• The speech given by Gore the following evening was watched by 65 million Americans. There Gore expressed that he did not agree with this decision of the court but would accept it. He also pledged that he would honor the new president-elect and help him in fulfilling America’s great vision.

Al Gore’s Awards and Other Environmental Works

After his defeat in the Presidential elections of 1999, Gore devoted most of his time to finding solutions to environmental issues and raising awareness about it. 

• He made a documentary in 2006 on his book “An Inconvenient Truth” which discusses global warming issues. This film bagged the Academy Award for best documentary, adding one more feather in the Al Gore awards cap. The film also won two Oscars in the same year.

• Gore vehemently criticized Bush’s government and published a book in 2007 called “The Assault on Reason” where his views on President Bush were penned down.

• In the same year, he got the Primetime Emmy Awards for his creative achievement in interactive television for Current TV. Current TV was co-founded by him in 2005 and it was a user-generated content channel. In 2013 Current TV was sold to Al Jazeera which was a cable TV news network in the Arabic language.

• Gore received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007 which he shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

• His book “An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergence of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It” won a Grammy award in 2009 for best-spoken word album.

• He published the book “Our Choice: A Plan To Solve the Climate Crisis” in 2009 in which he provides many solutions for the climate crisis.

• Al Gore published the book “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change'' in 2013 where he analyzed the impact of various factors on humanity’s prospects. The factors included technological, sociopolitical, and environmental forces.

• He published a sequel to his 2006 book “Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” in 2017.

• His other awards include the Webby Award (2005), Prince of Asturias Award(2007), and Dan David Prize (2008).

Some Not-so-Known Facts About Al Gore

• Al Gore met his wife Tipper in his senior school prom in 1965 though Tipper had come to the prom with another date.

• He became friends with actor Tommy Lee while studying at Harvard University.

• He wanted to be a novelist initially.

• Gore was not in favor of the Vietnam war yet enrolled in the army and served as a reporter.

• He left the law school after two years to run for and win a seat in the House of Representatives.

• His 6-year old son Albert was hit badly in 1989 in a car accident. This was one of the reasons why he did not run for the presidency in 1992.

• Al Gore was 44 when he became the Vice President which made him one of the youngest people to become a Vice President of the U.S.

• Al Gore is the 2nd Vice President of the U.S. who won a Nobel Prize. The first one was Charles Dawes who got the Nobel prize in 1925 for his reconstruction work in World War I in Europe.