I took the time to look up Al Gore (or Albert Gore, Jr., if you prefer) on the internet. I did this because he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in global warming. I am not sure I believe that he deserves the award, but whatever. He won it, has apparently decided to give the prize money to a foundation for the study of climate change, and that is fine. He is a little out there for someone who doesn't want to climb back into politics. He keeps showing up in the public eye. The Oscars, the Nobel Prize, on Larry King, etc. Those wealthy preppies just keep going, like the energizer bunny.
It was interesting to read about him. He, of course, was born in Washington DC, because his dad was a congressman and senator from Tennessee. Like President George W. Bush, he grew up in the DC area, and spent time in the family home in Carthage, Tennessee. Like me, his connections to Tennessee are more family ties rather than personal. He went to St. Albans private school and was in the middle of his class. He made a 1300 or so on his SAT and got into Harvard. I gauge this against my friend, Graham Gardner, who made a 1580 (out of 1600) on his SAT and graduated on or near the top of our class at Dunwoody. Yet they both got in to Harvard. Sometimes it is who you know.
Anyway, he apparently wasn't doing well at Harvard as an English major (HA!) and changed to political science, the family business. After graduation, he got into Vanderbilt Law School and it didn't appear that he graduated before he entered the army. He was stationed in the states, but was shipped over to Vietnam, where he served in the engineering corps for about a year.
When he came home, he spent some time in Divinity School at Vanderbilt, but, again, it didn't appear that he completed the studies. He ultimately went to work for the Nashville Tennessean. He finally ran for congress and won, virtually unopposed.
The issue that I was concerned about most involved his statements about his connection to the development of the internet. Most Republicans hold this up as braggadacio and stretching the truth, if not outright lying. However, he apparently did propose a bill in congress, when he was a young congressman, that pushed the development of the internet. This bill was passed into law and was the first legislation which pushed the internet for public use. Apparently, he has been involved with computers and the development of the internet for a long time and is on the board of Apple.
When computers are such a large part of our lives, both in business and personally, it is hard to remember what it was like prior to the development of the pc and the internet world wide web. When I was young, my dad worked for IBM. Computers were big machines that took up three rooms and were the exclusive bailiwick of large corporations who could afford the cost of the machinery.
In the late 1970's the personal computer was developed and the possibility of average people owning a computer in their offices and homes became a reality. At first the computers were bulky and slow and cost much more than most average families wanted to spend for themselves.
When I first went into business, the first personal computers were being used in offices. Within the first ten years of my practice, the prevelance and cost of computers changed dramatically. Now I have two computers at home, and five computers in the office. Computers are so much a part of our lives that it is hard to remember what it was like before when computers were exclusive to institutions.
No wonder we tend to laugh when we hear a politician talking about working toward the development of the internet. But apparently, it is true that Al Gore had something to do with taking the world of computers out of the hands of large business and institituions and placing them in our hands. Obviously, he didn't have anything to do with the actual engineering of the computers. But, in his role as a politician, he did contribute to the development.
By the way, if you read the wikapedia article on Albert Gore, Sr., his father, the story is much more interesting. He grew up on a farm in Tennessee, went to college at Middle Tennessee State University, the same college from which my grandmother received her masters in education. He taught school for awhile until he decided to go to night law school in Nashville to become a lawyer. After graduation, he practiced in Carthage for several years until he ran for Congress. When he ran for congress, his victory and the victory of Frank Clement as governor, apparently was considered the end of the political machine out of Memphis which ran politics in the State of Tennessee for the majority of the 20th century.
As a congressman and later a Senator, he was a typical Southern Democrat, with the exception that he refused to join Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats in opposition to Harry Truman and the more moderate, more racially liberal Democrats of the time. As a Senator, he took stands in favor of Civil Rights and against the Viet Nam war, which were unpopular in the majority of the South, but was in line with his fellow Senator from Tennessee, Estes Kefhauver. Due to his opposition to the war, President Nixon and the national Republican party decided that he was vulnerable and they ran a conservative Republican against him in 1970 and he lost.
After that, he went back to the practice of law and ultimately ran an antique store before he died.
I wish that politics in the United States wasn't so polarized and that the moderates like Al Gore, Sr., who were willing to take independant stands on issues could be elected these days. It seems like both parties want to drag their candidates away from the center. So we end up with a political battleground where the parties can't compromise because their positions and their philosophies are so opposed to one another that they can't reach a conclusion that is satisfactory to either party. The prevelance of big money and big lobbies doesn't help. It just drives the machine.
There seem to be no independent voices in government. This lack of independence continues into the judicial branch of federal and state government. My personal hero is Louis Powell. A W&L graduate, college and law school, his was the independent voice of reason in the United States Supreme Court for over a decade. I wish we had a few more like him. I like the independence of thought which was demonstrated by Albert Gore, Sr. also.
Well, that's my tirade on the Gore family and politics for the day.
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