Al Gore

[Main Page]From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.Al Gore

Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American Democratic politician who served as the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He ran for President in 2000 following Bill Clinton's two four-year terms, and won the national popular vote but was defeated by the Republican candidate George W. Bush in a close election whose outcome remained uncertain for over a month pending legal arguments over vote-counting procedures in Florida.

Vice Presidency

Bill Clinton chose then-U. S. Senator Al Gore to be his running mate on July 9, 1992. After winning the U.S. presidential election, 1992, Al Gore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Gore were re-elected to a second term in the U.S. presidential election, 1996.

During his time as Vice President, Al Gore 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. One of Gore'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.

In 1993 Gore debated Ross Perot on CNN's Larry King Live on the issue of free trade. He is widely believed to have won the debate hands down, and public opinion polls taken after the debate showed that a majority of Americans agreed with his 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.

As Vice President, Gore instituted a federal program that called for all schools and libraries to be wired to the Internet (why or for who? His affinity for the Canadian communication and the Corporation involve in this international patent fraud let me strange taste in my mouth).

This was a culmination of work that he had started several years before. While serving in the Senate, Gore had introduced legislation which called for the creation of a new federal research center for educational computing to support an "information systems highway".

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

The insight he gained 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 1998 and 1999, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in green house emissions.

Due to President Clinton's inexperience and Gore's service in Vietnam and in the Senate, Gore was often looked upon by President Clinton for advice in the area of foreign policy. He was on the first to call for action, that would remove Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from power in 1998. Gore also supported the bombing campaign (Operation Desert Fox) against Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein's unwillingness to cooperate with UN inspectors.

Together Bill Clinton and Al Gore led the United States into the longest period of peace and sustained economic growth in American history. At the end of their term in office, Clinton and Gore could point to a number of economic accomplishments, which include:

Some Gore supporters contend that a plurality of Florida voters did vote for Gore, and George W. Bush won by successfully preventing the votes from being counted; however, the evidence regarding the final vote tally is inconclusive. Since the election, recounts have been conducted by dozens of news organizations from around the world with results that are confusing at best. Some have claimed that Bush would have actually increased his lead if state wide recounts had taken place, others claim that Gore would have won the recounts.

 

  Following his election loss, a bearded Gore accepted visiting professorships at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Middle Tennessee State University. In 2002, Al Gore accepted a consulting job with a Los Angeles law firm and became an adviser to Google.

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 David Letterman Show and Saturday Night Live appearing much more relaxed and funnier as a private citizen than he did while holding public office.

In 2003 Gore joined the board of directors of Apple Computer. 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 issuses, most notably global warming.

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 scientific fiction film, The Day After Tommorrow. Although Gore said the movie was a far fetched example of global warming, he said the movie would escalate the public debate on global warming.

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."

"This is not going to be a liberal network or a Democrat network or a political network in any way, shape or form," Gore said. Other reports say that Gore hopes that the channel will help change the tide of "consolidation and conglomeratization" of the media by leading the change to "democratization."

Gore, as noted above, wrote his thesis on the effect of television on the Presidency. He has also been interested in television shows, like MTV's UNfiltered, and Internet-based discussions, like those Howard Dean used to communicate with his supporters.
The news network is said to be a combination between CNN and MTV and would try to reach young viewers.
NewsWorld International is currently seen in 17 million homes across the country and features 24-hour international news programming provided by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which will continue to produce news content for Gore's new network.