ALBERT GORE was born on December 26, 1907 in Granville, Tennessee, son of Margie Denny and Allen Gore. He married Pauline La Eon. He is an alumnus of State Teachers College of Murfreesboro (BS. 1932). He studied law in night school at the YMCA in Nashville.

Before and during his years at Murfreesboro, Gore was a rural schoolteacher. From 1932 until 1936, he was superintendent of education for Smith County in Tennessee. In 1936, he was admitted to the Tennessee bar and established his private law practice in Carthage. In 1936 and 1937, he was commissioner of labor for Tennessee. From 1939 until 1953, Gore served in the House of Representatives from Tennessee’s fourth congressional district, Since 1953, Gore has been in the United States Senate.

During his career in the House of Representatives and in his first term in the Senate, Gore was rather unobtrusive— one of many Democratic hacks, following the party’s leadership and its program of welfarism and internationalism.

With the advent of the Kennedy Administration, however, Gore blossomed as a leading leftist with an especial preoccupation with foreign policy. As a latecomer to the heady area of foreign affairs, he has demonstrated a flair for contradictions and inconsistencies.

In 1961, when a personal confrontation was proposed between President Kennedy and the Soviet Union’s Premier Krushchev, Gore was opposed to the meeting because he insisted that he did not trust Khrushchev. A year later, Gore was happy that the meeting took place. Somehow Gore had forgotten that the Kennedy-Krushchev exchange was a most embarrassing diplomatic debacle for Kennedy. However, in 1962, Gore was taking a rosy view of American foreign policy. He somehow discovered that Kennedy had brought about the political unity of free world nations. The creation of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the creation of the Peace Corps, and the United Nations-United States aggression against the Congolese province of Katanga were hailed by Gore as major steps toward world peace.

In 1961, Gore preached that there should be no nuclear test ban treaty if the Soviet Union insisted upon a veto of a reliable inspection System, and he expressed shock when the Soviet Union resumed nuclear testing. He decided that the perennial Geneva Disarmament Conference was nothing but a propaganda forum for the Soviet Union.

Going from an iron-hard line to jelly-soft acquiescence was an easy transition for Gore when the Kennedy Administration called for conformity. Gore, in 1962, expressed his faith in John F. Kennedy’s ability to negotiate a good nuclear test ban treaty, and by 1963, he became a major advocate of what became known as the Moscow Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. From an insistence upon a reliable inspection system, Gore retreated to speciousness as he argued that "because we could not obtain inspection, the Government of the United States finally had to lake the best it could get, which was a limited agreement which we did not believe required inspection in the Soviet Union."

As he fought for ratification of the Moscow Treaty, Gore said: "If we must wait until the Russians have demonstrated conclusively and to the satisfaction of all that they will keep their word, we shall wait forever." Unwilling to wait forever, Gore threw caution aside and urged acceptance of the treaty even though, unfortunately, the Soviets record with respect to fidelity to trust is not very good." Five years later, without reservations of any kind, Gore fought tenaciously for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If he had discovered any evidence that the Soviets’ "record with respect to fidelity to trust" had improved, he did not divulge the same to his colleagues in the Senate. (In 1969, Gore was a major opponent of the defensive ABM system as he warned about the threat of a nuclear holocaust.)

On the Vietnam War, Gore has always been a dove in the same coat as J. William Fulbright. In 1965, Gore argued that the Vietnam War was liable to bring the Soviet Union and Red China closer together, overlooking the reality that the Soviet Union and Red China were united in their support of North Vietnam. Gore’s solution was to make the Vietnam War a responsibility of the United Nations.

In 1968, Gore suggested that "the best hope for peace" was the creation of a neutral, non-aligned status for Vietnam (North and South), Laos, and Cambodia. How this incredible panacea was to be achieved, Gore left unexplained. As another solution to end the war, Gore proposed that both North Vietnam and the United States halt the sending of troops into South Vietnam.

By 1969, Gore was as much at war with South Vietnam’s government as Senator Edward Kennedy. He insisted that the Vietnam War was a political and civil war. And he argued that even a Communist government for all Vietnam would pose no real threat to United States national security. (In 1968, Gore supported the presidential aspirations of the Ultra-pacifist Senator George McGovern. Since at least 1964, Gore has been favored with the support of the ultra-leftwing pacifist Council for a Livable World.)

In Other areas of foreign policy, Gore has made ritualistic obeisance to the left. He has been completely committed to the United Nations, he has been a Complete devotee of foreign "aid" programs, (As an example of his bias: he went all out to support "aid" for Communist Poland and Communist Yugoslavia, but in the case of a genuine ally of the United States, he ranted: "I know of no more repressive regime than the Chiang Ka1~shek regime.") He supported Lyndon Johnson’s "building-bridges-to-the-East" program, and he favors trade in non-strategic goods with any Communist country, including Red China. (Of course, Gore’s concept of what constitutes strategic and non-strategic categories is identical with that of the ultra-leftists, who, since early in the Kennedy Administration, have decided that the moat sophisticated materials sent to the Communist bloc — diesel engines, generators, ball and roller bearings, computers, tires, and virtually anything else that may be used in the manufacture of military equipment —are really useful only for peaceful purposes.)

In late 1968, Gore and his senatorial colleague Claiborne Pell visited Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Upon their return, they urged the incoming Nixon Administration to expand United States contacts with the Communists in Eastern Europe by means of more cultural, scientific, and technological exchanges and increased trade, tourism, and consular relations. Somehow Gore and his companion could see "the - inevitable erosion of Soviet-designed and Soviet-directed Communism in Eastern Europe." Although neither Gore nor Pell mentioned that Eastern Europe, at the dictation of the Soviet Union, was sending war material to North Vietnam to be used against American forces in a very hot war, they were anxious that the Nixon Administration should not resume a "cold war or even a cool war" against the Soviet Union.

While Gore, in recent years, has been making more and more excursions into foreign affairs, he has not neglected the domestic front. During the Johnson Administration, he was almost idolatrous of the President and the Great Society program. His only serious criticism was that Johnson was not spendthrift with the taxpayers' monies.

About the only domestic issue on which Gore has been unable to adopt a totally leftist stance has been the matter of civil rights. He has resorted to the strategy of straddling the advocacies of segregation, in an effort to be all things to all constituents in the old Confederate State of Tennessee. However, as the years pass, Gore moves closer to the liberal agitators who are at war against the South and States’ Rights.

Biog. Dictionary Of the Left, Francis X. Gannon