Al Gore:: Surviving Career Setbacks

Al Gore:
Surviving Career Setbacks
http://www.fedre.org/en/content/al-gore-considers-video-
games-fight-climate-change
04/2016-5893
This case was written by Frédéric Godart, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD. It draws from
elements of a class presentation made by INSEAD 11D MBA students Ana Rita Sarmento, Clara Barby, Eugenio
Sanchez-Ramade, Evrim Erol, Natalia Abreu and Priya Downes. It is solely the responsibility of Frédéric Godart. It is
intended to be used as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of
an administrative situation.
Additional material about INSEAD case studies (e.g., videos, spreadsheets, links) can be accessed at
cases.insead.edu.
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This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Sanjay Singh's MBA06/Term-I/Behaviour in Organization at Indian Institute of Management - Sirmaur from Jul 2020 to Nov 2020.
When Al Gore (Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.) was appointed 45th Vice President of the United
States of America in 1993, he was to become one of the most powerful people ever to hold
this office. A faithful lieutenant to President William “Bill” Clinton (1993-2001), he shared
with him all major decisions and what appeared to many to be a deep friendship. Ultimately,
he seemed likely to succeed Clinton, thereby realising a life-long dream of becoming US
president. However, Gore was destined to become one of the only US presidential hopefuls to
lose the presidential election, despite winning the popular vote in 2000.
Nevertheless, while he failed to secure what is probably the most powerful job on earth, he
managed to reinvent himself after his defeat and build a successful and influential post-
political career. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, he was to become one of the most
prominent environmentalists in the world. How did Al Gore manage to become one of the
most powerful Vice Presidents in US history? How did he later survive a major career
setback? Was he, in the end, better off losing the presidential election?
The Prince of Washington DC?

“People looking at Al Gore today see a product of the American upper crust: a
presidential contender born in Washington, reared in a top-floor suite of a hotel
along Embassy Row; his father a senator, his mother trained in law, the high-
achieving parents grooming their prince for political success at the finest private
schools in the East.”
David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima,

The Prince of Tennessee: Al Gore Meets His Fate, p. 22.
Al Gore was born on March 31, 1948, in Washington DC, to Albert Gore Sr. and Pauline
LaFon Gore. At the time, his father was US Representative for Tennessee. His mother had
studied law and was one of the first female graduates in this discipline from Vanderbilt
University. The Gores already had a daughter, Nancy LaFon Gore, born in 1938, but longed
for a son. Albert Gore Sr. had the local newspaper, The Tennessean, promise to put the news
on the front page if his second child were to be a boy. “WELL, MR. GORE, HERE HE IS—
ON PAGE 1” it proclaimed when Al was born.1
As a child, Al Gore grew up in a two-bedroom apartment at the Fairfax Hotel in Washington

DC (see Exhibit 1), spending summers in Carthage, Tennessee, where his parents owned a
farm (see Exhibit 2). Life there was disconnected from the city, where he attended an elite all-
boys school, St. Albans. Gore was described by his English teacher, Charles Saltzman, as “A
very competent young man” but “not scintillating”.2 He ranked 25th out 51 students in his
senior class in 1965, but managed to get into Harvard. Planning to major in English in the
hope of becoming a novelist, he concentrated on government, achieving average grades
despite a high IQ of 134.3
1 Karen Tumulty, “Democratic Convention: The Women Who Made Al Gore,” Time, August 21, 2000.
2 David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima, The Prince of Tennessee: Al Gore Meets His Fate, p. 55.
3 David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima, “Gore's Grades Belie Image of Studiousness. His School Transcripts
Are a Lot Like Bush’s,” The Washington Post, March 19, 2000.
Copyright © INSEAD 1
At Harvard, Gore was socially active and for one year was president of a student association,
the Freshman Council. He famously declared at a freshman meeting that he aimed to become
president of the United States. “That pretty much brought the house down,” said one of his
classmates.4 He became friends with Tommy Lee Jones, who went on to become an Academy
Award winning actor, but they were never actually roommates as implied in several accounts
of Gore’s Harvard years. Gore also developed several long-term mentoring relationships with
professors, the most notable being Martin “Marty” Peretz, who had Gore as a student in his
selective freshman seminar “Problems of Advanced Industrial Society”. Peretz would
purchase The New Republic in 1974 and become one of Gore’s most active promoters.
Another influential figure at Harvard was oceanographer Roger Revelle, a pioneering scientist
of global warming. Gore took his class and felt that it was “a privilege to be able to hear about
the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen
undergraduates.”5
Gore graduated in 1969, getting an A for his thesis “The Impact of Television on the Conduct
of the Presidency, 1947-1969”. A question he pondered was whether he would serve in
Vietnam or attempt to avoid the draft like most of his Harvard classmates. Even though he
was against the war, he finally decided to go, partially in order to help his father—who was
strongly opposed to the war—get re-elected. His father lost the election in 1970 and Gore
came back home in 1971. He then tried twice to go back to school, at Vanderbilt University
(the “Harvard of the South”), first to study religion, then law, but twice failed to graduate.
Tennessee and High-Tech: Al Gore in Congress

Gore’s personal life was changed forever when he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth
“Tipper” Aitcheson, in 1965, at a party after St. Albans prom night. Tipper remembered
thinking from their first meeting, “Oh, boy! He’s good looking.”6 The daughter of an
entrepreneur, Tipper had attended St. Agnes (the all-girls equivalent of St. Albans). She
followed Al and attended college in Boston. They married on May 19, 1970, and had four
children: Karenna (born 1973), Kristin (1977), Sarah (1979), and Albert III (1982) (see
Exhibit 3). Tipper’s vision for her family’s future was that Al would “be a novelist, or a
lawyer, maybe buy the local newspaper”. The one thing he would not do, she told her friends,
was follow in the footsteps of his father.7
That was not what happened. In 1976, at the age of 28, Gore decided to run for Congress.
This decision happened after almost five years spent as an investigative reporter in Nashville
at The Tennessean, its publisher, John L. Seigenthaler, being a friend of his father. There,
Gore wrote about 400 bylined articles, and helped expose the corruption of some council
members. However, the fact that one of them, pharmacist Morris B. Haddox, was convicted
but later acquitted shattered Gore’s faith in the judicial system.8
4 The Prince of Tennessee, p. 68.

5 Melinda Henneberger, “On Campus Torn by 60’s, Agonizing Over the Path,” The New York Times, June
21, 2000.
6 Ibid, p. 65.
7 Democratic Convention: The Women Who Made Al Gore
8 Kevin Sack, “Al Gore as News Breaker, Not News Maker,” The New York Times, November 18, 1999.
He served three times in the House in the 4th congressional district of Tennessee (which his
father had represented) and once in the 6th. His father was not directly involved in his
campaign, since Gore Jr. wanted the electorate to view him as his own man. In 1985, Al Gore
joined the Senate, for Tennessee, where he remained until becoming vice-president in 1993.
Tipper, alongside a passion for photography, made a name for herself in 1985 for convincing
the music industry to use warning labels against profane lyrics on discs.9
While Gore would often go to Tennessee on week-ends and vacation to meet with his
constituents, he was also very active in both the House and the Senate. He became an “Atari
Democrat”, i.e., one in favour of developing high-tech industries on American soil in order to
compete with the Japanese and Western European firms that were perceived as a growing
threat to more traditional industries. Gore was co-chair (with Republican leader Newt
Gingrich) of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future. In 1986, he introduced the
Supercomputer Network Study Act, and later helped craft the “Gore Bill”, which
subsequently became the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991.
Overall, he left a positive impression from the years spent in the House and the Senate, as
James Henry, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, would confirm: “He’s a terrific
politician, who’s very tenacious and always in control.”10
45th Vice President, 1993-2001

“I’ve defined my job in exactly the same way for six years now: to do everything
that I possibly can to help him be the best possible president (…) That gives a
clarity of focus to everything I do and serves to filter out a lot of the ups and
downs.”
Vice-President Al Gore, 199811
Gore became vice-president upon Clinton’s election in 1993, winning the support of 370
delegates versus 168 for George H. Bush, who was standing for re-election with Dan Quayle
as running mate. (The Clinton-Gore ticket also won the popular vote by a margin of 5.8
million votes). The Clinton-Gore pairing seemed to be in breach of what a presidential ticket
should be. It lacked geographical, generational and ideological diversity, since both were from
the South (Clinton was from Arkansas), both were baby-boomers in their forties, and both
were moderate centre-left Democrats. Gore appeared more hawkish than Clinton in the
international arena because, like nine other Democratic senators, he had supported US
intervention in Iraq (the First Gulf War).12 13 They were easily re-elected in 1996, against the
Republican Dole-Kemp ticket.
9 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4279560 (Accessed June 3, 2012).

10 John Eisendrath, “The longest shot; measuring Al Gore Jr. for the White House - Albert Gore Jr.,”
Washington Monthly, November 1986.
11 Ceci Connolly, “Gore Tests Wings Above Scandal’s Turbulent Air,” Washington Post, October 14, 1998.
12 Senate Historical Office, “Albert A. Gore, Jr., 45th Vice President (1993 - 2001),” (Accessed May 31,
2012).
13 Michael Kelly, “THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats; Clinton Defends Position on Iraqi War,” The
New York Times, July 31, 1992.
His path to the vice-presidency emerged after a failed attempt to win the Democratic
nomination in 1988, losing to Michael Dukakis, who eventually lost the presidential election
to George H. Bush. Gore did not run again in 1992 because three years earlier a terrible
automobile accident had almost cost the life of his son Albert. He declared: “I didn’t feel right
about tearing myself away from my family to the extent that is necessary in a presidential
campaign.”14
In 1992, he wrote his first book, Earth in the Balance, which could be considered his first
fully articulated environmental manifesto (see Exhibit 4).
As vice-president, Gore had a powerful influence on many questions of interest to Clinton,

and they had a weekly private lunch as well as regular discussions. He was involved in issues
pertaining to new technologies, the environment, and international relations. He was credited
with popularizing the term “information superhighway” as a description of the internet. He
played a prominent role in the debate on the Kyoto Protocol, and was in favour of military
intervention in Bosnia. As explained by political scientist James MacGregor, Gore formed—
with Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary—a “troika” that defined the policies of the two Clinton
administrations (see Exhibit 5).15 The troika was formed despite initial tension when it was
mooted whether Hillary would occupy the vice-president’s “Square Office”, which Gore
ultimately reclaimed.16
In 1998, when Clinton became engulfed in the scandal of his relationship with a White House
intern, Monica Lewinsky, Gore “assumed the role of patriarch during a family crisis”17 for the
White House staff and the Democratic Party. This helped to clean up his image, which had
been tarnished by a fundraising affair at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in California in 1996,
where Gore had received money (US law does not authorise the receipt of funds from an
institution that does not pay taxes, such as a temple). Although he was not prosecuted, the
affair attracted a lot of negative media coverage and criticism.
The 2000 Presidential Campaign

In 2000, Vice-President Al Gore was the clear front-runner in the campaign for the
Democratic Party nomination. The only serious opposition came from former New Jersey
Senator Bill Bradley, a former basketball star who had played for the New York Knicks.18
Gore won the nomination on March 14, 2000 (see Exhibit 6).
During the campaign, a number of allegations surfaced from what was perceived as Gore’s
tendency to embellish his personal story. Most prominent among them were those that alleged
he had claimed that he and he wife Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story; that he was the
“inventor of the internet”; and that he uncovered the 1978 “Love Canal” toxic waste disaster.
14 Gwen Ifill, “Gore Won’t Run for President in 1992,” The New York Times, August 22, 1991.
15 James MacGregor Burns and Georgia J. Sorenson, Dead Center: Clinton-Gore Leadership and the Perils of
Moderation, 1999, p. 82.
16 Albert A. Gore, Jr., 45th Vice President (1993 – 2001).
17 Ceci Connolly, “Gore Tests Wings Above Scandal’s Turbulent Air,” Washington Post, October 14, 1998.
18 Devin Leonard, “Can Dollar Bill Bradley Dunk Al Gore?,” The New York Observer, September 27, 1999.
In 1997, in a Time story, Gore was presented spending “two hours swapping opinions about
movies and telling stories about old chums like [author] Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al
and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in ‘Love Story.’”
Segal later declared that the “character of the preppy Harvard hockey player, Oliver Barrett
IV, was modelled on both Mr Gore and his college roommate, the actor Tommy Lee Jones”,
but that he “did not draw a thing from Tipper”.19 Gore said that the Time report on what he
said had been misunderstood, but his credibility suffered.
Regarding the second story, Gore declared on March 9, 1999 to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “During
my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet”—a
remark interpreted by some journalists as a claim to be the father of the internet.20
Commenting on the debate, two prominent figures in the internet’s history, Robert Kahn and
Vinton Cerf, affirmed: “As the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core
protocols that make the internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions
as a congressman, senator and as vice president. No other elected official, to our knowledge,
has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.”21 Despite this high-level
support, Gore’s credibility suffered some more.
In 1999, he was quoted saying, “I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal.
Had the first hearing on that issue.” Lois Gibbs, one of the leaders of the Love Canal Home
Owners Association, later explained: “He did not begin Love Canal (…) It was the governor
banging on the federal government’s door that got Gore involved.”22 But the story again gave
the impression that he systematically took liberties with the truth for his own political gain.
His opponent, George W. Bush, son of former US president George H. Bush and Governor of
Texas, who won the nomination for the Republican Party on March 24, 2000, ran on a simple
personal narrative platform, “compassionate conservatism”, a promise to re-establish an
honourable presidency after the Lewinsky affair, and that he was “fun to be with.”23
Unlike Bush, Gore and his team did not enjoy a good relationship with the press. Carter
Eskew, a Gore strategist, was quoted saying: “We basically treated the press with a whip and
a chair (…) and made no real effort to schmooze at all.”24 As a consequence, according to the
Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, while most of the media
coverage of Bush described him as a “different kind of Republican”, the focus on Gore was
mostly about his alleged lies.25 As Howard Kurtz, a Washington Post media columnist, wrote:
“Everything is fair game in a presidential campaign, and part of the test of any candidate is
how he deals with an often sceptical press corps (…) The press sets up a series of obstacle
courses (…) and if you are Al Gore and considered to be super-smart, yet not particularly
gregarious, it’s the moments of awkwardness or misstatements that are going to get media
attention. If Gore had had a lighter touch, he probably could have overcome that.”26
19 Melinda Henneberger, “Author of ‘Love Story’ Disputes a Gore Story,” December 14, 1997.
20 http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/03/18390 (Accessed June 3, 2012).
21 Thomas C. Greene, “Net builders Kahn, Cerf recognise [sic] Al Gore,” The Register, October 2, 2000.
22 http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-72638.html (Accessed June 5, 2012).
23 Evgenia Peretz, “Going After Gore,” Vanity Fair, October 2007.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
Bush won the 2000 election with a narrow margin of five electoral votes (271 vs. 266) despite
the fact that Gore had won 540,000 more votes than him—that is to say 0.5% of the votes cast
nationally. Bush became only the fourth US president to win despite losing the popular vote
(after John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison).27 The US Supreme
Court played an instrumental role in his victory by ruling on December 12, 2000 (in a 5-4
vote) that there could not be a recount of the votes in the contested state of Florida, despite
evidence of faulty voting equipment and ballots. Bush won the Florida election by 537
votes.28
Al Gore did not become the 43rd President of the United States.
Gore’s Relationship with Bill Clinton

Years later, on August 5, 2009, Al Gore and Bill Clinton met at Burbank Airport in California
to celebrate the release of two journalists working for Gore’s Current TV, who had been held
captive by the North Korean government. Gore and Clinton had kind words for each other and
shared a long embrace in front of the cameras. Gore expressed his gratitude: “A special thanks
to President Clinton, my partner and friend. So grateful.”29 The meeting was perceived as an
attempt to mend a relationship that had never fully recovered from Gore’s defeat in 2000.
The two men were at first very close. During Clinton’s 1992 campaign they famously toured
the country in a bus, often accompanied by their wives, who allegedly developed a deep
friendship. The relationship was reported to have turned sour in the aftermath of the Lewinsky
affair, which saw the Republicans in Congress seeking to have the president impeached. At
first Gore expressed public support for Clinton, but gradually distanced himself and felt
betrayed when it appeared that the president had lied under oath. When Gore himself ran for
president in 2000, his selection of Senator Joe Lieberman as running mate seemed to confirm
the split—Lieberman had publicly distanced himself from Clinton during the Lewinsky
scandal.
It has been reported that a couple of days after Gore conceded defeat on December 13, 2000,
the former president and his deputy had a tense one-hour discussion in the White House about
who was to blame. According to several witnesses, Clinton criticized Gore for distancing
himself from his presidency and keeping him off the campaign trail. Gore blamed Clinton for
the Lewinsky affair and the adverse effect it had on his chances of election.30
While Gore never explicitly supported Barack Obama in the 2007 Democratic Party
presidential primary elections, neither did he express support for Hillary Clinton, casting
additional doubt on whether the Clinton-Gore relationship could ever be mended.
27 Barbara A. Bardes, Mack C. Shelley, Steffen W. Schmidt, American Government and Politics Today, 2008,
Cengage Learning, p. 307.
28 Albert A. Gore, Jr., 45th Vice President (1993 – 2001)
29 Adam Nagourney, “Clinton and Gore, Together Again,” The New York Times, August 6, 2009.
30 Richard L. Berke, “After Election, Clinton and Gore Had Tense Discussion on Blame,” The New York
Times, February 7, 2001.
After the Election Defeat: A Leading Environmentalist and
Businessman
After his defeat, Gore and his family had a two-month trip to Europe. He grew a beard—a
rare occurrence among American politicians31—which he kept for a while after his return
home. In 2001, he taught for a year at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism,
giving a non-credit class entitled “Covering National Affairs in the Information Age.”32
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Gore openly supported President George W. Bush,
whom he called his “commander in chief”.33 However, in September 2002, in a speech to the
Commonwealth Club in California, he challenged the necessity of war against Iraq.34 On
October 26, 2002, following a joint resolution passed by the US Congress authorizing the
“use of military force against Iraq”, the invasion began.
While Gore’s position on the Iraq war attracted heavy criticism—“It was entirely dishonest,
cheap, low. It was utterly hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas,
very nearly of facts,” wrote Michael Kelly in The Washington Post35—it also marked the
beginning of a new career focused on fostering political involvement among young
Americans, and on the environment, notably the issue of climate change.
Gore did not run for the 2004 presidential election against Bush, in spite of speculation that he
would—the slogan “Re-elect Gore 2004” was seen on t-shirts, mugs and bumper stickers.
Instead he endorsed Vermont Governor Howard Dean (notably because of Dean’s opposition
to the Iraq war) rather than his 2000 running mate Joe Lieberman, who was also a presidential
hopeful.36 John Kerry ultimately made the run-off against Bush (and lost).
Gore attacked the second Bush administration on various issues, not only the Iraq war but also
on the way it handled Hurricane Katrina in 2005. On this occasion he chartered two planes at
his own expense to evacuate 270 people.37 Gore’s criticism of the Bush administration
culminated in his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, in which he denounced the “erosion of
civil liberties, media consolidation, denigration of science by the federal government, and
right-wing threats against the judiciary.”38 The book was so ‘programmatic’ that it led some to
think Gore would run again in 2008. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, for example, declared: “If he
ran, there’s no question in my mind that he would be elected.” 39
Gore’s first major post-presidential defeat business endeavour was the creation of the cable
channel Current TV, for which he partnered with Joel Hyatt, an attorney who had co-founded
Hyatt Legal Services in 1977 and was National Finance Chair for the Democratic Party in
31 Julian Borger, “Gore: Behind the Beard,” The Guardian, 14 August 2001.
32 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/01/gore.html [Accessed May 18, 2012]
33 Richard L. Berke, “Bush ‘Is My Commander,’ Gore Declares in Call for Unity,” The New York Times,
September 30, 2001.
34 The Economist, “Re-enter Al Gore. To little effect. The ex-vice-president hasn’t stirred up anti-war
feeling,” The Economist, September 26, 2002.
35 Michael Kelly, “Gore-ing Iraq,” Washington Post, September 25, 2002.
36 Jodi Wilgoren, “Gore Backs Dean in ’04 Race,” The New York Times, December 9, 2003.
37 http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/9/155458.shtml (Accessed June 3, 2012).
38 Joe Conason, “Al Gore, uncensored, in the ‘Assault on Reason’,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2007.
39 Eric Pooley, “The Last Temptation of Al Gore,” Time, May 16, 2007.
2000. In 2004, they bought Vivendi Universal-owned NewsWorld International, renaming it
Current TV, which was launched on August 1, 2005. It targeted the 18-34 demographic and
dedicated about a third of its air time to viewer-created content (or VC2). In 2009, Current TV
experienced a downturn and Hyatt was replaced by former MTV president Mark Rosenthal,
who took over as CEO with the goal of transforming it into a more traditional network.40
While Gore’s original idea to diffuse user-generated content was prescient, it was the choice
of media (television) that was wrong, as was later shown by the success of YouTube.41
In addition to his ventures in the media industry, Al Gore also started Generation Investment
Management (GIM), in 2004, with former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood.42 GIM had
offices in both London and New York. According to its website, its vision was to “embed
sustainability into the mainstream capital markets”. Additionally, “Five percent of the
profitability of the firm” was to be “allocated to the Generation Foundation” which aimed to
“support global non-profit sustainability initiatives”.43
Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth (directed by Davis Guggenheim) premiered at the

Sundance Film Festival in Utah, and opened on May 24, 2006 in New York and Los Angeles.
In the film, Gore gives a slide-show presentation about his understanding of the causes and
consequences of global warming. According to his own estimates, Gore has made the
presentation more than a thousand times since 1989. He starts the film by introducing himself
with a joke: “I’m Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States”,44 before
moving into a fact-intensive critique.
An Inconvenient Truth was a success both in terms of critical acclaim—it won 19 awards,
including two Academy Awards (Best Documentary and Best Song) out of five Oscar
nominations45 (see Exhibit 7)—and in terms of box office takings, grossing almost $50
million worldwide. As of May 2012, it was the seventh highest-earning documentary on the
US market.46 Its use as teaching material in several countries including Canada, Spain and the
United Kingdom, led to adverse reactions from the climate change sceptics camp, which in
some instances were justified. In the UK, a High Court judge’s verdict was that the film could
be used in schools but only with guidance because “nine statements in the film were not
supported by mainstream scientific consensus”. Commenting on the judgment, the UK
Minister for Children, Kevin Brennan, stated: “It is important to be clear that the central
arguments put forward in An Inconvenient Truth, that climate change is mainly caused by
man-made emissions of greenhouse gases and will have serious adverse consequences, are
supported by the vast weight of scientific opinion (…) Nothing in the judge’s comments today
detract from that.”47
In 2006, Gore launched the Alliance for Climate Protection (since rebranded as the Climate
Reality Project). The mission of this non-profit organization, which boasted more than 5
40 Lisa Derrick, “Al Gore’s Current TV Lays Off 80 Staff, Changes Direction,” The Huffington Post,
November 12, 2009.
41 Andrew Wallenstein, “New troubles at Al Gore’s Current TV,” Reuters, June 25, 2010.
42 David Clarke, “Al Gore, Former Goldman Executive Blood Start Firm,” Bloomberg, November 8, 2004.
43 http://www.generationim.com/about/ [Accessed May 17, 2012].
44 Peter Rainer, “Al Gore’s global warning,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 26, 2006.
45 http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/342290/An-Inconvenient-Truth/awards [Accessed May 18, 2012].
46 http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=inconvenienttruth.htm [Accessed May 19, 2012].
47 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7037671.stm (Accessed June 6th, 2012).
million members in 2012 and has been headed since 2009 by Maggie L. Fox, was to “reveal
the complete truth about the climate crisis in a way that ignites the moral courage in each of
us.”48 Among other services, it proposed to send “Al-Gore trained presenters” to local
communities to give speeches to raise awareness about man-made climate change and ways to
stop it.
Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) in 2007, “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge
about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed
to counteract such change”.49
In 2010, Al Gore and his wife Tipper announced that they were separating after 40 years of
marriage. It came as a surprise to many as the couple had gone through many struggles
together, but their lives and careers had grown apart since his presidential defeat in 2000.50
Gore has made a considerable fortune since that defeat. When he left government in 2001, his
net worth was less than $2 million, mostly in real estate. Besides the income generated by his
books and speeches (for which he can charge more than $100,000 per appearance), he also
made timely investments in Google and Apple, as well as playing an advisory role to both. He
became a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), which made a $75 million
investment in companies that included Silver Spring Networks, a provider of solutions to
make electricity systems more efficient. After the US Energy Department announced that it
would invest $3.4 billion in this type of technology, it was clear that KPCB would greatly
benefit, prompting some of Gore’s most vocal opponents such as Tennessee Representative
Marsha Blackburn to accuse him of personally profiting from the policies he was pushing for.
Some dubbed him the first “carbon billionaire”. Gore replied that he was simply “putting his
money where his mouth is”, and was proud to be financially successful while acting for the
greater good.51
For some, Al Gore is a global environmentalist who has held true to his beliefs in his business
ventures, the Nobel Prize crowning a lifetime’s dedication to the advancement of humankind.
For others, he has used his political capital and clout for financial gain. Despite the debate,
Gore continues to fight for his ideas with literary flourish: “The climate crisis, in reality, is a
struggle for the soul of America. It is about whether or not we are still capable—given the ill
health of our democracy and the current dominance of wealth over reason—of perceiving
important and complex realities clearly enough to promote and protect the sustainable well-
being of the many. What hangs in the balance is the future of civilization as we know it.”52
48 http://climaterealityproject.org/about-us/ (Accessed May 29, 2012).

49 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/ (Accessed May 19, 2012).
50 Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts , “40 more years? Not for Al and Tipper Gore, who’ve announced
their separation.” The Washington Post, June 2, 2010.
51 John M. Broder, “Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor,” The New York Times, November 2, 2009.
52 Al Gore, “Al Gore: Climate of Denial,” RollingStone, June 24, 2011.
Exhibit 1
Senator Albert Gore Sr., Pauline Gore, and Young Al Gore
at the Fairfax Hotel in 1957
Source: The Associated Press
Exhibit 2
The Gores at their Carthage, TN Farm
Source: The Tennessean
Exhibit 3
Al and Tipper Gore with their Three Daughters, Kristin, Sarah, Karenna
Source: Nancy Rhoda
Exhibit 4
Books by Al Gore (a selection)
Our Choice. 2009. New York: Rodale Books.

Our Purpose: The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture 2007. 2008. New York: Rodale Books.
The Assault on Reason. 2007. New York: Penguin.
An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do
About It. 2006. New York: Rodale Books.
(With Tipper Gore). Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family. 2002.
New York: Owl Henry Holt.
(With Tipper Gore). The Spirit of Family. 2002. New York: H. Holt.
From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less. 2001.
Amsterdam: Fredonia Books.
(With William J. Clinton). 1992. Putting People First: How We Can All Change America.
New York: Times Books.
Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose. 1992. Earthscan.
Exhibit 5
US Vice President Al Gore, US President Bill Clinton, and US First Lady Hillary Clinton
Source: Robert Reeder – The Washington Post
Exhibit 6
The Gore 2000 Campaign Logo
Source: Michael Lutzky – The Washington Post
Exhibit 7
Awards and distinctions (a selection)
2009: Grammy Award, Best Spoken Word Album for An Inconvenient Truth (book)
2007: Nobel Peace Prize (joint award with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
2007: Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV
2007: Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth (documentary film)
2007: Runner-up, Time’s Person of the Year
2005: Webby Award, Lifetime Achievement “for three decades of contributions to the
internet”

Al Gore:: Surviving Career Setbacks

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Al Gore:: Surviving Career Setbacks

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Al Gore:

Surviving Career Setbacks

The Prince of Washington DC?

David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima,

As a child, Al Gore grew up in a two-bedroom apartment at the Fairfax Hotel in Washington

Tennessee and High-Tech: Al Gore in Congress

4 The Prince of Tennessee, p. 68.

45th Vice President, 1993-2001

Vice-President Al Gore, 199811

9 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4279560 (Accessed June 3, 2012).

As vice-president, Gore had a powerful influence on many questions of interest to Clinton,

The 2000 Presidential Campaign

Gore’s Relationship with Bill Clinton

Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth (directed by Davis Guggenheim) premiered at the

48 http://climaterealityproject.org/about-us/ (Accessed May 29, 2012).

Source: The Associated Press

Source: The Tennessean

Source: Nancy Rhoda

Our Choice. 2009. New York: Rodale Books.

Source: Robert Reeder – The Washington Post

Source: Michael Lutzky – The Washington Post

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