Al Gore
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
The Linda and Mitch Hart Lecture
Al Gore’s political career began in 1976, when he
was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state of
Tennessee. After serving eight years in the House, he was elected to the
U.S. Senate in 1984 and reelected in 1990. Chosen as Bill Clinton’s
running mate in the 1992 presidential campaign, Gore was inaugurated as
the 45th vice president of the United States in January 1993.
As a central member of President Clinton’s economic team, he helped to
usher in a period of economic expansion and achieve the first balanced
federal budget in 30 years. He led the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government, which helped attain a reduction in the size of
the federal government. Gore was the Democratic candidate for president
in 2000. In his best-selling book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and
the Human Spirit, Gore outlines his efforts to protect the
earth’s ozone layer and clean up toxic-waste dumps.
Son of former U.S. Senator Albert Gore, Sr., Al Gore grew up in Tennessee and Washington, D.C. After earning a B.A. degree in government with honors from Harvard University, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam. He later studied at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School and School of Law. Gore is now a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University and Fisk University. He and his wife, Tipper, live in Tennessee.