Inventing Al Gore (Paperback)

From Amazon.com
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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Veteran Newsweek journalist Turque has produced a marvel of reportingAa dispassionate election-year biography without an agenda. In contrast to last year's fiercely partisan Gore: A Political Life by conservative pundit Bob Zelnick, Turque's book offers a balanced, insightful critique of the man who seems to have been groomed for the presidency from birth. ("We raised him for it!" Gore's father, a former U.S. senator, exulted in 1992 when he learned his son was headed for the White House as vice-president.) Turque shows how the pressure to succeed has shaped virtually every aspect of Gore's careerAfrom his decision to volunteer for service in Vietnam to his "Faustian bargain" with Clinton in 1992. The same ambition, Turque believes, has also led to Gore's most embarrassing missteps, including the 1996 fundraising scandals and his preposterous claim that he invented the Internet. The focus throughout the book is on Gore's record, although Turque can't resist a few speculations about the characteristics of a possible Gore presidency: Gore, the author predicts, would be a vigorous, high-minded executive, prone to techno-evangelism and moral exactitude; he would also tend to be ideologically inconsistent and politically tone-deaf. Sharply written and well researched, Turque's book laudably refuses to dismiss Gore as either a wooden caricature or the country's most famous beta male. It depicts him as a complex individual capable of both stalwart leadership, as when he stiffened Clinton's spine during the 1995 budget fight with Gingrich, and callous exploitation, as when he went against the wishes of his environmental constituency to aid a polluting paper mill during his 1988 campaign for president. This biography should be indispensable reading for anyone wishing to make an informed deci