When he was growing up in Washington, Albert Gore Jr. once took a phone call from the White House and then eavesdropped as his father, a Democratic senator from Tennessee, spoke with President John F. Kennedy.
The curious 13-year-old listened on an extension as Kennedy and the senator discussed how the young president`s administration would grapple with one of its earliest domestic crises.
Defiant steelmakers had ignored Kennedy`s wishes and announced an increase in prices, and now an incensed president was orchestrating a campaign to pressure the them to rescind the increases.
”I didn`t know presidents talked like that,” young Al told his father afterward.
Countless other political lessons, learned while tagging along to Senate hearings and watching his father campaign in the courthouse squares of rural Tennessee, groomed Al Gore Jr. for what has been a stellar, if brief, political career. And they have helped propel his effort to become the youngest president in history.
Gore is a 39-year-old senator from Tennessee now, having taken giant strides to follow in his father`s footsteps. And in seeking the office that occasionally haunts his father as a ”what might have been,” Gore has demonstrated political wisdom beyond his years, despite being the youngest member of a youthful Democratic field.
”Gore does by instinct what others have to learn through mistakes,”
Sen. James Sasser (D., Tenn.) has observed.
This probably explains his knack for seeming to age right before the eyes of amazed, first-time audiences.
His youth strikes people right away. After all, Gore would be 40 on
inauguration day if he could overcome longshot odds, largely on the strength of his border-state positioning and image as a moderate, to win the Democratic nomination and then the election next year. The youngest presidents, John F. Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt, were 43 when they took office.
Saying that America wants a generational change after septuagenarian President Reagan, Gore also manages to disarm many who are concerned about his youth.
Larry Radway, former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman and the host of a recent coffee-and-doughnuts forum for Gore in Hanover, N.H., said after the candidate`s spiel:
”When I first heard he was 39 and saw him this morning, I thought, `Holy cow! He`s young.` But you don`t think he`s too young when he stands to talk. He`s a man of considerable maturity and he`ll be taken seriously by others because he takes himself seriously.”
If Gore`s talking does get him in trouble during the course of a campaign that began in Washington on April 10, it will be because he resists being pinned down on controversial issues and because he faces the closest, harshest scrutiny in a dozen years of a charmed political career.
Washington born and bred, Harvard-educated, a beneficiary of the reputation earned by his father during 32 years in Congress, Gore may face criticism for his privileged upbringing and the fact that after publicly eschewing a presidential race he changed his mind when prominent Democratic fund raisers pledged their support.
But the watershed ”Super Tuesday,” where Gore must do well in the 12 Southern primaries and caucuses among the 21 across the nation that day, is not until next March and he has been busy working to raise his profile outside Tennessee. His fund raisers say 60 percent of the $1.4 million raised by Gore has come out of Tennessee, which along with Missouri borders more states
–eight–than any other state in the country.
In his first campaign trip to Chicago, Gore met with 200 Democrats at a reception last week and spoke at a Hispanic-affairs conference. Thomas Coffey, a host of the reception, said, ”Gore`s grasp of the issues is as good as anybody`s and he effectively reminds people that he`s only a few years younger than were John and Robert Kennedy when they sought the White House.”
Once a divinity-school student at Vanderbilt University, Gore has the homey but firm manner of a preacher delivering a sermon. Once a law-school student, also at Vanderbilt, he mixes in the persuasiveness of a trial attorney making his opening argument.
Gore enjoys a reputation on Capitol Hill as a tireless and resourceful, if sometimes humorless, worker who has carved a niche on arms control and environmental issues. Those who have followed his career aren`t convinced that his Baby Boomer status will be a liability: More than half of those registered to vote and those likely to vote in 1988 were, like Gore, born after World War II.
”I think that the experience and accomplishments of the last 11 years in the House and Senate are in my case unique among all the candidates,” Gore said in an interview.
The technology buff tapped away at the keyboard of the personal computer on his desk in his Senate office, catching up on some work, as he talked about himself.
”Many people asked me the question as I was considering the race, `Why don`t you wait?` And in a sense, it`s a good question. But in another sense, it`s the same question confronting the country. Are we ready to face the challenge of the future now, or should we continue to wait?
”I think the stakes are so high in 1988 and that I have a unique contribution to make,” he said, borrowing now from his stump speech. ”So I am not comfortable in saying I`m going to wait until a time when it`s more convenient for my personal calendar or for my career.”
Except for a period of disillusionment and disinterest in the 1960s, Gore has been on a political, perhaps even presidential, career path since birth.
Born March 31, 1948, in Washington, Gore prepped at the exclusive St. Alban`s Episcopal School for Boys, an academy on the grounds of the National Cathedral, where some of the most influential figures in the nation`s capital educate their sons.
”Gorf,” as he was known to classmates, completed his nine years at St. Alban`s as an honors student and three-letter varsity athlete. Not exactly a grind, he was a legend in his time for being able to balance a broom atop his nose for long periods while lying on the floor.
Gore was elected junior class treasurer and as a senior won the role of Liberal Leader in the elite ”government class,” set up to act like a congressional committee, in which vice presidents, cabinet members and other men of influence have shared their insights with students debating contemporary issues.
Gore was privy to valuable political lessons at home, where the family dining room in their suite at the Fairfax Hotel in Washington was a frequent tableaux for caucuses and coffee with the most influential members of Congress.
Whether it was plotting strategy for presidential campaigns, as in 1956 when Gore Sr.`s name was put in nomination for vice president at the Democratic National Convention, to debating U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which the senator opposed, the discussions were more than just grown-ups talking for young Al.
Sometimes he`d tag along to hearings on Capitol Hill. After studying in Mexico, Gore served, at 15, as his father`s interpreter on a junket to Central America.
There was a trip through France and Switzerland to study French.
He also worked as a copy boy at the New York Times and studied history at Memphis State University.
”It is a unique background, and I think a beneficial one,” said the elder Gore, who acknowledges having wondered more than once if he could have been a presidential contender. ”I had felt my own deficiencies and I tried to give my children the best education in both school and home life.”
Part of the regimen was the family`s trips between the capital and Tennessee. For while they lived a privileged life, the Gores tried to imbue their son and daughter, Nancy, with middle-class values.
Most of each summer was spent on the family farm in Carthage, Tenn., where Al was expected to complete his chores before going swimming with the local kids. Schools there opened earlier than in Washington, so Al and his sister spent the last month of summer vacations in the local schools.
The former senator, still a Washington resident and a frequent visitor to his son`s Senate office, routinely writes campaign memos and jokes that the candidate can work into his stump speech. He has enlisted support for his son from political friends and acquaintances.
When Gore was in the 6th grade, his father challenged him to a push-ups competition that went on daily for eight months until the youth finally surpassed his athletic father at 125. Gore has been challenging himself and others to push-up contests, or their motivational equivalent, ever since.
”Out of the blue, he would challenge me to see who could do more push-ups and sit-ups. I`d beat him, but not by much,” recalls John Tyson, one of Gore`s college roommates. ”He`s a guy who`d grit his teeth and do what he set out to do.”
After graduating with honors in 1969 with a degree in government, Gore was drafted into the Army and got orders for Vietnam. Among the presidential hopefuls, Gore is the only Vietnam veteran. He served in Vietnam as a news correspondent for an Army publication.
Gore remembers his entry into the military as one of the most difficult times of his life. Having participated in anti-war demonstrations, Gore shared the view of many contemporaries and his father: The Vietnam policy and the war were wrong. He contemplated refusing military service, and his parents say they would have backed him.
But pragmatism and loyalty to his father moved him to enter the service, he said. If he didn`t go, quota systems dictated that someone else would have to, Gore reasoned, and his father was in a bitter re-election struggle with Republican William Brock, a Chattanooga congressman who portrayed his opponent as a dove. The liberal issue and accusations of aloofness from his constituents resulted in the three-term incumbent`s defeat.
While young Al was in Vietnam, his bride, high-school sweetheart Mary Elizabeth ”Tipper” Aitcheson, worked as a freelance photographer for the Nashville Tennessean and persuaded editors there to publish some of Gore`s dispatches from overseas.
Upon returning from Vietnam, Gore got a job on the Tennessean, working his way up from the police beat to City Hall reporter and investigative projects. During his five years at the paper, Gore exposed a zoning scandal that resulted in the conviction of an elected official.
Gore says his reporter`s skills have helped him on Capitol Hill, knowing better than many of his colleagues how to gather and disseminate information. He has been credited with uncovering the fact that inspections of crucial booster-rocket O-rings had been cut back, leading up to the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster.
His conversion to politics, according to Gore, was nurtured by his work at the Tennessean and completed by the news in 1976 that Joe Evins was retiring from Congress. Evins was the Smith County man who had been occupied Albert Gore Sr.`s old House seat since 1952.
”When I was a child, I looked at public service, politics and government as something I might be interested in doing because my father was a hero to me, and still is,” Gore said recently between campaign stops in New Hampshire. ”But after the successive experiences our country had with Vietnam and Watergate, I felt that politics would be the very last thing I`d do.
”It was only as a reporter covering government and politics that I rekindled that earlier childhood interest and began to believe that I had a contribution to make and skills that I could put to use.”
Gore said that in the time it took to pick up the telephone, digest the news about Evins and then hang up, the transformation had been completed.
”I turned to my wife and said, `I`m going to run for Congress,` and then I got down on the floor and started doing push-ups to begin getting in shape for the campaign,” Gore said.
By narrow margins, he bested a crowded primary field for the nomination and then a Republican opponent in the staunchly Democratic district. Gore was easily re-elected for three consecutive terms on the strength of an ambitious legislative record and, having learned a lesson from his father`s mistakes, weekly open meetings with constituents.
His in-district homework, high-profile ”motherhood” issues in Congress and neutralizing the Democratic competition paid off for him in 1984 when Republican Sen. Howard Baker retired. No other Democrats challenged Gore in a primary, despite the enticement of an open Senate seat, and he defeated Republican state legislator Victor Ashe of Knoxville with an unprecedented 61 percent of the general election vote.
The announcement of Gore`s presidential candidacy coincided with the start of his wife`s national publicity tour for her book, ”Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society” (Abingdon, $8.95). For more than a year Tipper Gore, 38, has gained national attention by leading a campaign against sexually explicit rock music and videos.
With both of them on the road, they managed occasionally to cross paths in airport terminals.
”They are a detemined team and know exactly where they`re going: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,” said Ashe of the couple, who were married 17 years ago in Washington Cathedral. They have four children, three sons and a daughter, ages 4 to 13.
Opinion is divided as to how his wife`s controversial cause will affect Gore`s candidacy. It will hurt him among 18- to 34-year-olds, according to Charles Cook, an analyst for the Government Research Corp. and editor of the Cook Political Report. But it`s expected to play well among conservative and older voters.
Campaigning for president, wearing his uniform of a navy blue suit–the trousers hemmed to float just above his shoelaces–blue shirt, red tie and black shoes, his perfectly combed hair lightly flecked with gray, Gore says it`s time for a generational change.
After eight years of an elderly, unresponsive Ronald Reagan, he says, the nation finds itself in a period when history is accelerating.
”Life is becoming qualitatively different as technology pulls us ahead,” Gore says, ”exposing us to problems, as well as potential, we`re only now beginning to focus on.”
He ticks off some of them: the environment, especially an ozone layer in jeopardy with the potential for creating a global greenhouse effect; an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund, which he helped create, for cleaning up toxic waste sites that he says is poorly managed; the ethics of gene therapy and human organ donations. With the National Organ Transplant Act, Gore established a computerized network for locating, listing and matching organs and recipients.
Gore is the high-tech politician in a high-tech age. He gobbles up material, either printed or via the personal computer sitting on his office desk, on subjects ranging from superconductivity to nuclear arms.
At the end of a 14-hour campaign day, relaxing over a couple of Corona beers in an airport lounge during a 90-minute flight delay, Gore passes the time by discussing the phenomenon of superconductivity, its practical implications for developing more affordable supercomputers and the need for the U.S. to stay competitive with foreign nations in developing the technology.
”Technology affects the way we think,” said Gore, explaining the cornerstone for a nuclear arms reduction thesis that has become a widely accepted position for arms control. His theory, the signature issue of his campaign, is that the United States and Soviet Union act out of the fear of suffering a first-strike nuclear attack. He reasons that by taking that capability away, by reducing multiple warhead missles to single warheads, no one has a first-strike advantage.
”People are riveted by the life-threatening possibility,” he said.
”Take away the kernel of fear that sustains the illusion that a nuclear war is winnable, and you`ve made nuclear war obsolete.”
Gore opposes the ”Star Wars” defense initiative, favors a nuclear test ban treaty and thinks it could be verifiable up to a certain level of confidence, is the only Democratic candidate who supports U.S. flagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers and a strong American presence in the Persian Gulf, and opposes U.S. support of the contras in Nicaragua.
He believes that economic growth, reductions in defense spending and elimination of government waste comprise the most prudent fiscal policy, but he does not rule out a need for new taxes. He opposes widespread mandatory testing for AIDS and advocates that the government underwrite and conduct intensive research on the disease. In the meantime, he says, expand measures for stopping the spread of the disease with relatively simple changes in lifestyles, such as practicing ”safe sex.”
Gore doesn`t support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, but he opposes federal financing of abortions and says that states and communities should be able to exercise local options on funding.
In the third-largest tobacco-growing state, it was not unusual that Gore followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and raised tobacco when he bought his own farm. Gore now raises cattle and says he opposes industry subsidies and has called for higher taxes on tobacco products. He said it`s not a subject he likes to talk about, but his family was rocked during his Senate campaign by the death of his sister from lung cancer.
Gore nearly bristles when asked where he ranks on the political spectrum. He says he eschews labels as ”not useful and out-of-date” but acknowledges having once glibly referred to himself as a ”raging moderate.” His chief of staff for the last 11 years, Roy Neel, says Gore is ”a mainstream Democrat, in the middle of the ideological bell curve.”
Democrats have embraced this Washingtonian warmly in Tennessee, where Gore`s candidacy has taken on heroic proportions. But they have one history lesson for him: In last month`s nationally televised debate among the presidential candidates, Gore said that if elected he would put portraits of the two presidents from Tennessee in his office–Andrew Jackson and James Knox. James Knox Polk, that is.
