Soldier Gore

EARLY during the research for my biography of Al Gore Jr., I came across an article on the 1970 campaign in which his father, Albert Gore Sr., lost the U.S. Senate seat he had held for 18 years. The piece, “The End of a Populist” by David Halberstam, appeared in the January 1971 issue of Harper’s. Halberstam, a former reporter for the Nashville Tennessean who knew the Gore family well, offers a good contemporary account of why the younger Gore decided to join the Army despite deep personal misgivings:

Young Albert graduated from Harvard this year: he is militantly anti-war and did not want to go into the Army. But he was faced with a terrible choice: to stay out and avoid the draft in a state like Tennessee would cost the Senate one of its leading doves. His family told him to make his own choice, that they could not care less whether Albert ran and won. In fact Pauline [Gore’s mother], who is bitterly and militantly anti-war, told young Al that she would be glad to go to Canada with him.

BZ

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Bob Zelnick

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Presidential Election

EARLY during the research for my biography of Al Gore Jr., I came across an article on the 1970 campaign in which his father, Albert Gore Sr., lost the U.S. Senate seat he had held for 18 years. The piece, “The End of a Populist” by David Halberstam, appeared in the January 1971 issue of Harper’s. Halberstam, a former reporter for the Nashville Tennessean who knew the Gore family well, offers a good contemporary account of why the younger Gore decided to join the Army despite deep personal misgivings:

Young Albert graduated from Harvard this year: he is militantly anti-war and did not want to go into the Army. But he was faced with a terrible choice: to stay out and avoid the draft in a state like Tennessee would cost the Senate one of its leading doves. His family told him to make his own choice, that they could not care less whether Albert ran and won. In fact Pauline [Gore’s mother], who is bitterly and militantly anti-war, told young Al that she would be glad to go to Canada with him.