Inventing Al Gore [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Bill Turque's biography of Vice President Al Gore will probably be remembered mainly for its charge that Gore smoked pot much more often in the 1970s than he has previously acknowledged. Yet this allegation--delivered by apparently credible sources--is just a tiny snippet from Gore's life story, as told by this Newsweek reporter. Turque begins with Gore's childhood years in Washington as the son of a senator and traces his steady climb to become the Democratic Party's favored candidate for president in 2000. The author admires Gore's liberal politics, but is also frustrated by what he considers the vice president's tendency to trim:

Gore is an usually thoughtful politician who has been an important, even prophetic voice on issues like global warming, arms control, and the changes wrought by the Information Age. But his life and career have also been punctuated by separations never quite achieved, and by bold strokes never quite converted into personal or political liberation.

Turque recounts a number of Gore scandals, most notably his questionable fundraising at Buddhist temples and heavy-handed calls to party donors (over which he famously claimed there was "no controlling legal authority"). And these stories clearly trouble Turque: Gore, like President Clinton, plays "games with the truth. But where Clinton's lies have been those of self-protection and survival, Gore's have by and large been ones of self-aggrandizement and glorification." Overall, Inventing Al Gore is a balanced and authoritative portrayal of a man whose most important years may lie ahead. --John J. Miller -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

A balanced and insightful account of the life of the Vice President from a Washington correspondent for Newsweek. Turque begins in Nashville in October 1999 with a snapshot of candidate Gore, a man who has ``squandered his advantages with such breathtaking speed.'' The Vice President has just moved his headquarters to Nashville from Washington, a move that is both practical and powerfully symbolic of his desire to distance himself from Beltway politics (and especially from the culture of scandal that has damaged the Clinton administration). We are then offered a quick account of a grim evening in November 1970 when Senator Albert Gore Sr. was defeated for reelection before returning to a chronology of the younger Gores career. Turque gives compelling portraits of Gores parents (the Vice Presidents mother was the only woman in Vanderbilt Law Schools class of 1936) and paints a largely sympathetic view of his subject as he plods through school (St. Albans) and college (Harvard). Turque does not hesitate, however, to share some details of Gores adolescent sex life and restrained experimentation with marijuana (yes, he inhaled). He acknowledges Gores courage in volunteering for military service during the Vietnam War, and he clearly admires Gores intelligence and tenacity. But he chides the Vice President for some of his character flawsspecifically for inflating his accomplishments (the famous claim to have invented the Internet) and for a ``zeal for election money in 1996 [that] eroded his judgment, sense of propriety, and usual attention to detail.'' Turque writes with the confidence born of exhaustive research (although both Al and Tipper Gore refused requests for interviews) and only occasionally slipsas when he twice employs the same folksy simile: ``like a piece of chewing gum on the sole of his shoe.'' A fluid, intelligent biographyboth comprehensive and comprehending. (20 b&w photos, not seen) (First serial rights to Newsweek)-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.