Albert Gore, American politician. House of Representatives 1977-1979.
Background
Ethnicity:
Gore is partly descended from Scots-Irish immigrants who first settled in Virginia in the mid-17th-century, and moved to Tennessee after the Revolutionary War.
Albert was born on March 31, 1948. Son of Albert and Pauline (LaFon) Gore.
Education
He was the captain of the football team, threw discus for the track and field team, and participated in basketball, art, and government. He graduated 25th in his class of 51, applied to only one college, Harvard, and was accepted.
Although he was an avid reader who fell in love with scientific and mathematical theories, he did not do well in science classes in college, and avoided taking math. His grades during his first two years put him in the lower one-fifth of the class. During his sophomore year, he reportedly spent much of his time watching television, shooting pool, and occasionally smoking marijuana. In his junior and senior years, he became more involved with his studies, earning As and Bs. In his senior year, he took a class with oceanographer and global warming theorist Roger Revelle, who sparked Gore's interest in global warming and other environmental issues. Gore earned an A on his thesis, "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947-1969", and graduated with an A.B. cum laude in June 1969.
Career
In 1976 he entered politics. He barely defeated the majority leader of the Tennessee house of representatives in the Democratic primary election for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, but then he won the general election by a landslide.
As a congressman, Gore developed a reputation that was markedly different from that of his defiant and daring father. With his work on the House science committee and energy and commerce committee, he became known as a thoughtful and plodding legislator. He took an interest in arms control and played a key role in fashioning a compromise that saved the MX nuclear missile from being defunded by Congress--a move that dismayed arms control advocates.
Gore introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986.
In 1988, Gore, taking advantage of the fact that there was no white Southerner in the race, mounted a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. He adopted positions more hawkish than his rivals. He supported nonmunitions aid to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, advocated a larger U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf, and opposed a multilateral ban on missile flight testing. Of all the Democratic contenders, Gore was the closest to a "cold war liberal." His campaign was not successful. On the stump, he was a wooden campaigner. Although he carried the South on "Super Tuesday," when ten states conducted primaries, he found little support outside his home turf, and quickly lost out to Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts.
Returning to the Senate, Gore expanded his brief to include environmental issues, particularly global warming. In a speech in 1989 he stated: "Now the question is: Did God choose an appropriate technology when he gave human beings dominion over the earth? The jury is still out."
In 1990, Senator Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries which sought to create a Global Marshall Plan.
He also continued to be a "neo-hawk" and in 1991 was part of the minority of Democrats that supported the authorization of war against Iraq. Gore advocated raising taxes on the wealthy and providing a tax credit to low-income Americans. Political writers frequently mentioned Gore, who pressed both conservative and liberal themes, as a presidential contender in 1992.
In a sharp departure from standard political practice, Gore often campaigned together with Clinton rather than separately, in order to emphasize that the Democrats represented a new generation of leadership.
Gore debated Vice-President Dan Quayle once; also in the debate was James B. Stockdale, the running mate of independent candidate H. Ross Perot. An aggressive Quayle repeatedly attacked Clinton as someone who could not be trusted and assailed Gore for environmental extremism. Gore defended the Democratic ticket and criticized Bush for presiding over economic decline. He repeatedly attacked Bush and Quayle for their opposition to freedom of choice on the abortion issue. Stockdale, who said little, appeared out of place.As a Senator, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill").
During the election and his term as Vice President, Gore popularized the term Information Superhighway, which became synonymous with the Internet, and he was involved in the creation of the National Information Infrastructure.
The Clinton–Gore administration also launched the first official White House website in 1994 and subsequent versions through 2000.
He launched the GLOBE program on Earth Day '94.