What was al gore known for

Bryan lost Since declaring a Calhoun of South Carolina was one of the most influential politicians in the United States and a leading voice for the South during the antebellum era. He served as a U. Kennedy entered the Senate after winning a special Stephen A. Douglas was a U. He was re-elected senator from Illinois After the Civil War, the party dominated in the South due to its opposition to civil and political rights for African Americans. After a major Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.

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Douglas Stephen A. In , Gore successfully ran for a seat in the U. In , Gore made a bid for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He won five southern states on Super Tuesday but eventually lost to Dukakis. Gore remained in the Senate until presidential candidate Clinton chose him as his running mate in They were elected into office that year and reelected in During his tenure, Gore worked to cut back on government bureaucracy.

However, his image suffered when he was investigated by the Justice Department for his fundraising activities. In his presidential campaign, Gore won the Democratic presidential nomination after facing down an early challenge from former Senator Bill Bradley.

Gore chose Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate, the first Orthodox Jew ever to be named on the ticket for a major national party.

Gore won the popular vote but conceded defeat to Republican George W. Bush after five weeks of complex legal arguments over the voting procedure in the presidential election.

Long interested in issues of environmentalism and climate change, Gore devoted his energy and influence to advancing research in those areas after leaving office in His lecture tour on the dangers of global warming led to the publication of An Inconvenient Truth and a companion documentary, which won a pair of Academy Awards.

On December 10, , Gore accepted a Nobel Prize for work on global warming. In accepting the prize, he urged the world's biggest carbon emitters, China and the U. Gore has backed numerous ventures and invested in such companies as Amazon and eBay through the firm.

The cable network eventually grew to reach more than 60 million households across the United States. Upon announcing in January that Current TV was being sold to Al-Jazeera, Gore described the two entities as sharing a common mission "to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.

According to a statement on Gore's official website, DSCOVR was equipped with a special camera to "monitor specific wavelengths that alert scientists to the presence of certain materials like ozone, aerosols, and volcanic ash.

Late that year, Gore met with President-elect Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka to discuss climate issues. Although he described it as a "lengthy and very productive session," Gore later was critical of Trump when the president took steps to roll back environmental regulations and announced he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. In early , Gore launched a voter registration campaign designed to increase turnout among young people who harbored concerns about climate change.

When her year-old daughter brought home a new music recording in , Tipper was shocked by its pornographic lyrics. She organized the Parents' Music Resource Center as a consumer movement to convince the record industry to adopt voluntary warning labels for violence, profanity, and sexually explicit lyrics.

In September , she testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, and extensive media coverage of the hearing made her a household name. Opponents in the music industry assailed her as a puritan trampling on civil liberties, raising concerns about the possible repercussions on her husband's political career. As Senator Gore readied for his first presidential campaign, he and Tipper traveled to Hollywood to meet with recording industry executives.

Denying any interest in censorship, the Gores apologized for having "sent the wrong message. As the presidential election approached, Al Gore declared his candidacy as a moderate Democrat from the "New South. His father, about to turn 80, was anxious to see him become president, and around Christmas he urged his son to make the race.

Gore deliberated for six months. His parents became convinced that he would not run, until he called to say, "Dad, it's a go. Washington Post congressional reporter Helen Dewar compared Gore's "cerebral, analytical, cautious" approach to politics to his father's "more romantic, passionate liberalism. Standing in front of the red brick courthouse in Carthage, Tennessee, he declared his candidacy as someone who could provide leadership for a "young and eager and restless nation.

Will ridiculed them as "not even peripheral. Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis won seven states, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson five. By avoiding the earlier contests and concentrating on the South, Gore had made himself the "southern candidate. Since Gore had been willing to confront Jackson on that issue, Koch endorsed him. While Gore sought the middle ground, however, Koch tended to polarize the electorate.

The mayor dominated campaign stops and kept the presidential candidate in the background. New Yorkers were growing tired of the mayor, who would lose his next race for renomination, so Koch's endorsement backfired in favor of Dukakis.

The Massachusetts governor won the New York Democratic primary with 51 percent to Jackson's 37 percent and Gore's 10 percent, effectively ending Gore's presidential campaign. Al Gore paid back his campaign debt, hired a speech consultant, and found a dance coach to help him move more fluidly.

Loosening up, he remarked to a crowd of well-wishers in Tennessee: "Hello, I'm Al Gore, I used to be your next president. He also joined a bipartisan group to create the first Interparliamentary Conference on the Global Environment in Environmental interests took him from Antarctica to the Amazonian rain forests.

Then all of these issues took second place to a horrifying personal blow. In April the Gore family attended the Baltimore Orioles's opening day game. Leaving the stadium, six-year-old Albert Gore III broke away from his father's grip and darted into the street. A car struck him and threw him into the air, leaving him broken and bloody.

They stayed with their son until his release from the hospital and spent the next two years helping to restore his body and spirit. Although the accident received extensive media coverage, the Gore family treated it as a private crisis.

They declined invitations to appear on television to talk about it or to give an interview for a cover story on People magazine.

As his son recovered, Gore returned to political pursuits and won a landslide election to a second term in the Senate in He also started writing a book on the environment. Late one night he wrote an introductory passage about his son's accident.

I could not control the emotion," he wrote. And it was one of the most intense and moving experiences I ever had in finally allowing myself to put that into words. He believed that the sympathy of others shattered barriers inside him. Gore found himself "increasingly impatient with the status quo, with conventional wisdom, with the lazy assumptions that we can always muddle through. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. It was too soon after the accident to subject his family to another national campaign.

Like Gore, other prominent Democrats chose not to run, on the assumption that the incumbent was unbeatable. The swift victory gave Bush astronomically high approval ratings. The Persian Gulf War also boosted Gore's standing, since he had bolted from his party's leadership to become one of 10 Democratic senators to support the war resolution, which had passed 52 to Gore had hoped that sanctions would work, but once the president had sent , troops, he "couldn't vote to pull the plug.

Gore's absence from the primaries benefitted another "New South" candidate, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, who campaigned successfully on the issues of economic recovery and health care, overcoming questions about his personal behavior. Clinton's top choices for vice president were all U. Gore had served in Vietnam and voted for the Gulf War, had an impeccable personal life and years of experience on Capitol Hill.

When interviewed about the vice presidency, Gore seemed reluctant and said he would "have to think about it for a long time. His opposition to the Bush administration's position on global warming, which he considered out of step with the rest of the conference, convinced him to accept Clinton's offer to join the ticket.

It was an unconventional selection for vice president. Instead of balancing the ticket geographically, ideologically, or generationally, Clinton and Gore mirrored each other. Close in age, they came from contiguous states and claimed centrist positions on most issues. Despite the lack of diversity, the choice enabled Clinton to make generational change a major theme of his campaign. The Clinton-Gore team enjoyed a spectacular "bounce" in the polls after the Democratic convention and their popular bus tours of the country.

The economic recession put the incumbent Bush-Quayle ticket on the defensive. Independent candidate Ross Perot's campaign also appealed to some voter groups that would otherwise have supported Bush. Gore and Quayle had served together in the House and Senate, served on the Senate Armed Services Committee together, and played basketball together in the House gym—where Gore conceded that Quayle had a better jump shot.

Quayle's aggressive debating style made Gore look "steady, stolid and smooth. On election night the Democratic ticket prevailed by 43 percent to Bush's 38 percent and Perot's 19 percent. Gore's father advised him to make sure he had a clear understanding of what his role as vice president would be.

In November, Gore met with Clinton in Little Rock to hammer out a two-page agreement outlining their relationship. Clinton committed himself to regular lunch meetings, recognized Gore as a principal adviser on nominations, and appointed some of Gore's chief advisers to key White House staff positions.

Gore knew that Hillary Clinton would play a unique role in this administration, and he had some anxious moments when an idea floated to give her the vice president's office in the West Wing and move him to the Old Executive Office Building. Gore managed to reclaim the "Square Office" down the corridor from the Oval Office, close enough for regular consultation with the president. Rather than competition, a sense of collaboration developed between the president, his wife, and his vice president, whom the political scientist James MacGregor Burns identified as the "troika" that led the Clinton administration.

Clinton involved Gore in decision making to an unprecedented degree for a vice president. Through their weekly lunches and daily conversations, Gore became the president's "indisputable chief adviser. Gore cherishes solitude. Tipper Gore felt closer in temperament with the president, with whom she shared a birthday. Both were gregarious, energized by being around people, and shared a similar sense of humor. On one occasion, Hillary Clinton joked to Al Gore: "Oh, we're the serious, stiff ones, stuck over here in a corner, while the two of them are out there making everybody laugh.

The vice presidency restored predictability to the Gores' family life. Unlike his Senate years, when he never knew when he would be back for dinner, Gore came home more regularly in the evenings and traveled less on weekends.

The Gores learned to cope with having the Secret Service around at all times by establishing a "family zone" on the second floor of the vice presidential mansion where they could eat meals and relax in private. With a Democrat in the White House, and majorities in both houses for the first time since Jimmy Carter's presidency, the Clinton-Gore administration aimed to end legislative gridlock.

Their first hurdle was the federal budget and its runaway deficits. President Bush's attempt to restrain the deficit by raising revenue had violated his "no new taxes" pledge. Clinton had promised a middle-class tax cut, but faced projections of deeper deficits than expected. Vice President Gore sided with the "deficit hawks" who convinced Clinton to abandon middle-class tax cuts in favor of a tax increase for the wealthy.

Republicans adamantly opposed any raise in taxes, and conservative Democrats complained that Clinton muddied the waters by simultaneously proposing an economic stimulus package with spending increases. Clinton and Gore vigorously lobbied congressional Democrats. In the House, they won by a single vote. In the Senate, a split allowed the vice president to cast the tie-breaking vote. The economy recovered, the federal budget was balanced, and surpluses replaced deficits. Within the administration, Gore became the voice of standing firm.

He counseled the president for the need of more self-discipline in his remarks, his programs, and his behavior. As "senior staffer," he attended every meeting, involved himself in every decision, and stood at the president's side on every formal occasion.

When others counseled compromise, Gore urged decisive action. Clinton commented that "Al is always on the side of encouraging me to do what I think is right. Clinton liked to say that he had the most powerful vice president in history. At public events, Gore's inclination to position himself next to Clinton sometimes made him seem glued to the president's side. He hardly moves. He is just there, frozen. For that reason, Gore declined to head Clinton's task force on health care reform, believing that it would consume all of his attention.

Instead, Gore chose to lead the administration's "reinventing government" initiative. Inspired by political scientist David Osborne's book, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector , Gore took on waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government and advocated trimming the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations.

Following a pattern set during his years in Congress, Gore held town meetings with federal employees to explain his objectives and listen to their suggestions. He consulted with cabinet secretaries on ways to streamline their departments.

He appeared on late-night television, wearing safety goggles and smashing an ash tray with a hammer to poke fun at the Pentagon's requirement for an expensive "ash receiver, tobacco, desk type" that would break into fewer than 35 pieces.

After a six-month study, Gore and Clinton stood together on the White House lawn in September , with two forklifts piled high with federal regulations. Implemented by executive order and legislation, the proposals reduced the federal workforce by a quarter of a million jobs, to its lowest level in 40 years.

The agreement among the United States, Canada, and Mexico had been negotiated by the Bush administration, but it was left to the Clinton administration to usher it through Congress. Members were divided between those who favored freer trade and those who feared it would cost jobs and hurt the environment. In the debate, Gore pointed out that Perot had profited from a "free trade zone" run by the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, and asked, "If it's good for him why isn't it good for the rest of the country?

Internationally, Gore was quicker than Clinton to advocate the use of military force in world trouble spots.