They call him Prince Al, and he doesn't seem to mind too much.
Long before Bill Clinton tapped him for the 1992 Democratic presidential ticket, Al Gore Jr. had been indelibly marked in the public imagination as American royalty, a political heir apparent groomed to rule from the time of his birth. The son of a senator and a Washington lawyer, the product of an exclusive prep school and Harvard University, Gore has (for better or worse) acquired the image of a man who has aspired to high public office with a single-minded ardor throughout his life.
But that perception ignores one eighth of the man's life. Fact is, Al Gore got where he is today by a more circuitous route than is generally known. When Gore came home from Vietnam in May 1971, any political ambitions he may have harbored earlier in life had been extinguished. Yet five years later, he was running for Congress.
In the meantime, Gore worked as a writer for The Tennessean, compiling an impressive record as a reporter and, incidentally, refocusing his life. A close look at Gore's journalistic career pokes a few holes in the facade of purposefulness that has been erected around the veep-aspirant.
Al Gore returned from Vietnam a changed man. The charmed life of his youth had taken an ugly turn since his graduation from Harvard in 1969.
Gore's decision to go to war had been a political act. The Nixon administration had targeted Sen. Albert Gore Sr. for defeat in the 1970 elections, a punishment for his opposition to the war. If young Al evaded the draft, as he considered doing, his father was finished. His own political ambitions almost certainly played a role as well, although Gore has never said so. He joined the Army as an enlisted man and completed basic training in Alabama. Gore received his orders for Vietnam in September 1970, while his father was embroiled in one of the bitterest campaigns in Tennessee history.
In the election two months later, Sen. Gore was turned out of office. A couple of weeks later, his son left for Saigon. Al Gore was posted to the 20th Engineer Brigade as an Army reporter and traveled with the unit to bases in the combat zone. Some of his stories appeared in Stars and Stripes, but the bulk of his work involved sending out press releases to hometown papers when a local boy made news.
His father's defeat made service in a conflict he deeply opposed even more abhorrent to Gore. His experiences in the war zone don't seem to have been deeply traumatic in themselves; although the engineers were sometimes fired upon, Gore has said he didn't see full-scale combat. Still, he felt that his participation in the war was wrong. In a 1988 book about Gore, Hank Hillin quotes from a letter home in which the reluctant soldier promised "to atone for [his] sins" by attending divinity school after he returned. (He did later attend Vanderbilt's divinity school for a while.)
But Gore was developing another career path. In March 1971, he sent one of his Army dispatches to his wife Tipper, then a Tennessean photo assistant. The article gives a breathless account of an all-night conflict at a fire base near the Cambodian border, where a detachment of engineers held off a few dozen Viet Cong infiltrators. In the story, Gore never claims to have been present for the firefight; he appears to have relied on witness accounts. Tipper passed the piece on to her boss, Tennessean publisher John Seigenthaler.
"It wasn't Ernie Pyle," recalls Seigenthaler, who was nonetheless impressed. "I expected it to be raw and unsophisticated, and maybe, because of where he was, somewhat jumbled. But he had done terrific interviews," says Seigenthaler. The story ran on the front page.
Specialist 5 Al Gore Jr. completed his Vietnam tour and left the Army in May 1971. Back on the family farm in Carthage, Tenn., he didn't have much to say about his experiences in Vietnam. Sen. Albert Gore Sr. recalls that his son spoke "surprisingly little" about the war. "It was so depressing that he seemed to avoid talking about it."
The Tennessean was a natural haven for Al Gore. The newspaper had a longstanding record of hiring reporters with notable surnames. Andrew Schlesinger, son of historian Arthur Schlesinger, was on staff when Gore came aboard, as was John Sirica, son of the federal judge who faced off against Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal. The paper had steadfastly supported Gore's father. If young Al wanted to bide his time and get his head together for a while before taking the first steps toward an expected political career, the Tennessean would make a comfortable rest stop.
Gore's colleagues quickly learned, however, that he was not looking for a way-station along the political trail. Al Gore wanted no part of public life. "He was disillusioned with politics after his father's loss," remembers Frank Sutherland, current editor of the Tennessean, who worked closely with Gore as a reporter. "When he came to work at the Tennessean, he preferred not to cover politics of any kind," says Sutherland.
On the contrary, the cub reporter seemed genuinely intent on succeeding as a journalist. Taking on the usual assignments for a beginning writer-- from minor crime stories to Madison's annual "Hillbilly Day"-- Gore quickly made an impression on the rest of the newsroom. Within a few months, he had acquired a reputation for turning routine assignments into imaginative copy. Assigned to cover the Christmas Parade in 1971, he filed a story "by Ebenezer Scrooge as told to Albert Gore Jr.":
I was sitting at home yesterday waiting for the football game to come on television when this little punk named Tim hobbles in, yelling "The Christmas Parade! The Christmas Parade!"
Don't get me wrong. I didn't want to go, but I've had it up to here with those Christmas ghosts jumping on my back every year-- so I took the little brat up to Broadway to wait for Santa Claus....
Gore's aversion to politics didn't keep him from taking on issues. Several of his earliest stories concerned veterans' affairs, and both Sutherland and Seigenthaler mention a March 1972 article on The Farm as one of Gore's best pieces. "The story was really well-received by everyone concerned," says Sutherland. "Here you had a commune from California moving down next door to a conservative religious community. Everybody kept waiting for it to explode. And Al wrote about the reasons it didn't, and how they managed to get along and come to respect each other." Sutherland recalls that "several other people had tried to get that story and failed," unable to gain the confidence of one side or the other.
It wasn't long before Seigenthaler called Gore in for a career chat. "Al, you can be as good in this business as you want to be," the publisher told the reporter. "There is no aspect of this business that you can't master. It's a big journalistic world out there. I hope you stay with us for as long as you want to stay. But the sky's the limit."
A hostile observer might interpret Gore's quick rise to prominence at the newspaper as the product of political back-scratching. There's no question that Seigenthaler, a former aide to Robert Kennedy, ran a liberal newspaper whose agenda had long coincided with that of Albert Gore Sr. Moreover, it's hard to argue that any ordinary 25-year-old reporter would be invited to present expert testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee's hearings on tax reform, as Al Gore was summoned in May 1973 by Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie. (Gore had written a series of articles on property tax issues.) As a journalist, Gore obviously benefited from his name. But it's also obvious that he displayed real talent.
Further expressing confidence in Gore, the newspaper sent him to Columbia University in September 1972 for a two-week seminar on investigative reporting. Gore had been assigned the Metro government beat. There was plenty to investigate.
One good way to measure a political reporter's effectiveness is to count the enemies he or she makes. Gore antagonized several of the right people during his time on the Metro beat, particularly Council members.
Robert "Dude" Reasoner was a colorful councilman from North Nashville, a white man who had represented a solidly black district since long before the passage of the Voting Rights Act and had been involved in the local numbers racket for even longer. He died Sunday, two weeks after being interviewed for this article. When asked for his impressions of Al Gore's coverage of the Council, Reasoner at first angrily declined to comment. Then he said: "I'm not going to vote for Gore, I'll tell you that. No way! Under no circumstances. Think about the convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1973. You can find some of the old members who'll tell you about it."
Did Reasoner take a secret to the grave? If any of the old members know what he was talking about, they're not telling much. But the "convention in San Juan" was a November 1973 meeting of the National League of Cities, for which the Council had voted itself a large enough chunk of public money to send over 30 council members and their spouses on an all-expenses-paid junket.
Al Gore flew down to witness these stewards of the civic treasury in action. The trip came at a time when he was investigating a number of shady dealings in the Council but had not yet gone to print with his results. Word of his investigations, however, had gotten around.
Several former councilmen recall that Reasoner and his wife were the host and hostess of a hospitality suite rented out by the Nashville delegation. "I think that Dude and Al maybe had a flare-up over that-- the way it was handled, or even that it existed," says one former member. "I don't remember exactly what it was."
It's not clear why Reasoner might still bear a grudge over a minor dispute after two decades. Other councilmen who were on the trip, however, formed their own negative impressions of the Tennessean's Metro reporter. For once in his life, Al Gore was perceived to be too loose.
Two former members independently applied the term "flower child" to Gore, both having apparently extrapolated from his casual appearance in San Juan that he was part of the dreaded counterculture. "He was into a hippie-type lifestyle-- long hair, sandals, casual clothes," says Joe Crockett, who later served in the State Senate and now says he supports Gore.
Seigenthaler and others who worked with Gore express surprise at this characterization. "I think he was much stiffer than most other guys in the newsroom," says Seigenthaler. "My impression was that the other members of the staff thought he was very straight, that he was unlikely to party, that it was rare to see him get out for a beer."
Gore may not have been quite square enough for some on the Council, but he seems to have inspired more fear than loathing. "He was sharp, and people were scared of him because he knew what he was doing," says Joe Crockett. "If they'd done anything wrong, they were a little uncomfortable when he was around. He was walking around with a note pad when there was some trouble going on in that Council, and it was not comfortable to have him walk up when you were talking among yourselves. A lot of people were nervous. A lot of people had done a lot of things."
Those "things" were part of a tradition of bribery and self-dealing that had long been entrenched in the process of local government. A press emboldened by the example of Watergate, though, wouldn't turn a blind eye to such hijinks anymore. By late 1973, Al Gore had decided to take on city hall.
First he had to win over Seigenthaler. Gore had spent most of 1973 working on a seemingly interminable investigation of the real estate appraisal process and property taxation in Nashville. His series hinted at corruption in a state agency involved in a controversial county-wide reappraisal, but it yielded more smoke than fire. Seigenthaler was not necessarily in a mood to launch Gore into another lengthy investigation; he had other priorities. Frank Sutherland, disguised as a mental patient, was in the midst of a major undercover investigation of Central State Hospital. Another reporter had recently spent a few days undercover in the Metro Workhouse.
"Al came into my office one day, and he had these stacks of documents pertaining to zoning actions taken by the Council," Seigenthaler remembers. "And like any busy news executive, I'm thinking, 'Oh, he's going to take me through a process that's going to absorb an awful lot of my time.' I think I was a little testy about it."
Gore challenged his publisher. "Look, don't prejudge this," he told Seigenthaler. Gore laid out the facts and inferences he had drawn from weeks of studying Council votes on zoning matters. The evidence was circumstantial but the scenario was compelling: In case after case, councilmen who had the power to influence how a property was zoned had introduced, withdrawn and reintroduced measures affecting the commercial zoning of real estate with development potential. The whiff of extortion was strong. Seigenthaler was sold.
Proving the case would require a source with inside knowledge. As luck would have it, a seemingly unimpeachable source appeared within weeks of Gore's meeting with Seigenthaler. Gilbert Cohen, a real estate developer who was about to complete a term as foreman of the Davidson County grand jury, told Gore in late December about the difficulties he had encountered in persuading councilman Morris Haddox to put an alley-closing ordinance on the legislative calendar. Haddox had introduced the bill, which affected one of Cohen's developments, but had then moved to defer it indefinitely.
Gore, Cohen, Seigenthaler and district attorney Tom Shriver concocted a sting operation to nail Haddox, a young pharmacist widely viewed at the time as an up-and-comer in local black political circles. Cohen, wired for sound, met with Haddox to ask what it would take to get the zoning measure back on the agenda. "It will take a grand," Haddox obligingly told Cohen. Cohen later handed Haddox a down payment of $300, in a transaction recorded by Tennessean photographers. Haddox reintroduced the bill to close the alley on February 5, 1974. The following evening, Haddox was arrested in the Council chamber after the Grand Jury indicted him on bribery charges. He was attending a meeting of the Ethics Committee.
The next morning's paper featured a series of front-page photos depicting the passing of the alleged bribe. Gore's feature, spelling out what looked like a clearcut case of corruption, was the second half of a double coup. The day before, he had published the first installment of a separate investigative series on the dealings of Donelson councilman Jack Clariday. He too would be indicted for zoning-related bribery, largely on the basis of Gore's spadework. Gore had brought down two councilmen in a week.
Morris Haddox was tried twice in the summer of 1974; Gore testified in both trials. Haddox employed an entrapment defense, accusing the newspaper of seeking to destroy his career so he wouldn't run against State Sen. Avon Williams, whom The Tennessean allegedly favored. Haddox said he accepted the bribe because he was conducting an investigation of his own. The first proceeding ended in a mistrial, with the jury split 8-3 in favor of conviction, three of its black members voting for acquittal. In the second trial, after transcripts of the incriminating tapes were ruled inadmissible as evidence, Haddox was acquitted.
"I think Al was disappointed that it ended like that," recalls Sutherland. "But on the other hand he was gratified that it really curbed in a very large way a practice that we felt was very widespread among many Council members at the time. While that story didn't result in a conviction, it certainly put a chill on that sort of activity in the Council. In that way it was a clear success."
Jack Clariday, like Haddox, accused the newspaper of picking on him. "I kinda know how the good Lord felt when they drug Him down there to nail Him to the cross," he commented. A Nashville jury convicted Clariday in 1975; his three-year prison sentence was later suspended.
Most of the Council members interviewed for this article now say they appreciate Gore's investigative work. Longtime councilman H. Sanders Anglea credits Gore with "a thorough job of reporting" and says "that was his duty to the public." Vice Mayor and Council leader David Scobey held his current position while Gore was investigating the body. "He was always a fair reporter," says Scobey, adding that the fate of Jack Clariday "straightened a lot of people out."
Roy Neel, Gore's chief of staff, advances modest claims on behalf of the candidate. "I don't think he would suggest that he cleaned up the Council, but clearly his work sent shock waves through the Council about this business-as-usual attitude on zoning," Neel says.
"The first evidence I had of his growing interest in public affairs was the content of the editorials he wrote," remembers Sen. Albert Gore Sr. His son had entered law school and become a part-time editorial writer not long after the final Haddox verdict came down in July 1974.
"In writing editorials, he had to inform himself about political matters, governmental matters, economics, the general scheme of American life," notes the senior Gore. The candidate's father thinks the experience of confronting such issues "contributed to his overcoming his aversion to political life."
Sen. Gore saw more and more evidence of this change during 1974 and 1975. On weekends in Carthage, "there were growing discussions between us about public issues-- which was not the case when he first returned from Vietnam at all," the retired lawmaker recalls. "He didn't seem to be interested in discussing them then."
When the Nashville area's congressional seat came open in August 1975, upon Congressman Richard Fulton's election as mayor of Nashville, some speculation centered on 27-year-old Al Gore as a possible candidate. Keel Hunt, a public relations consultant in Nashville who worked at the Tennessean for ten years, recalls that Gore scoffed at such talk. "I remember that he would be asked about [his ambitions] from time to time, over lunch or after deadline when we would be sitting around the newsroom," says Hunt. "He would usually shrug it off."
On the afternoon of February 29, 1976, Gore got a call from Seigenthaler. Joe L. Evins, the veteran congressman who represented Tennessee's 4th district, was announcing his retirement, Seigenthaler said. The surprise resignation would become public the next day. The publisher just thought Gore would want to know.
"I can't remember when I knew his attitude about public service was changing, but I was aware of it," says Seigenthaler. "I'm certain that when I called that morning I was aware of it."
Albert Gore Sr. was in California on the morning of March 1 when the telephone woke him at about 2:00 AM. He picked up the phone and heard his son's voice. "Son! Are you hurt?" asked the Senator.
"No, no Dad. Nothing bad has happened. Congressman Joe Evins has just announced he won't seek re-election, and I'm running."
The father paused. "That sort of took my breath away," he recalls, "and I finally got around to saying, 'Well, son, I'll vote for you.' That's the extent of the conversation we had and the part I had in his decision to run for Congress."
The next day's Tennessean trumpeted Gore's announcement at the Smith County Courthouse on its front page, but Al Gore was no Joe Simpkins. In contrast to the favoritism shown to the brother of Banner publisher Irby Simpkins in a 1984 congressional contest, The Tennessean's campaign coverage was scrupulously balanced. The morning paper did endorse Gore, but the solidly right-wing Banner did so first. The latter was impressed by Gore's conservative stands, and many who remembered his liberal father were surprised by some of his views-- for instance, his opposition to gun control and to the repeal of laws restricting what he termed the "abnormal" practice of homosexuality. In a nine-candidate field, Gore won the August primary by a close margin and had only token opposition in the general election.
Frank Sutherland had dinner with Gore in Washington during the young congressman's first term. "What's it really like to be in Congress?" Sutherland asked. "It's just like being an investigative reporter," Gore answered, "with one difference: I've got subpoena power."
As a legislator, Gore has taken on issues like arms control and the environment with much the same approach he used in his Metro Council investigations, sifting through massive piles of documents and developing an expertise in each issue. His experience as a reporter has shaped his career in other ways as well. He made the most of it during the 1988 presidential primaries, doing nothing to discourage the media from painting a glamorous picture of him as a young Woodward or Bernstein who had gone into politics.
Gore's eagerness to play up this image led to one of the worst gaffes of his short-lived campaign for the presidency. Gore told the Des Moines Register that his reporting "got a bunch of people indicted and sent to jail." The Memphis Commercial Appeal caught the exaggeration and newspapers around the country ran stories on it. At the same time, it emerged that the Gore campaign was distributing copies of two articles that made similarly inflated claims.
Gore chief of staff Roy Neel says the candidate "wasn't directly suggesting a cause and effect" when he misspoke. "He corrected himself fairly quickly," adds Neel.
None of this sits well with Morris Haddox, who left the Council long ago but still runs a pharmacy in Nashville. "He needs to stop lying," says Haddox. "I ain't ever been found guilty of anything." Haddox now sees the investigation that led to his indictment as part of a scheme by the city's white power structure to disenfranchise the African-American community. "They were trying to reduce the size of the Council, to take the blacks out," claims Haddox. "It's quite obvious how Mr. Gore took after us."
This contretemps aside, Gore's journalistic credentials have served him well. They may have played a role in making him, according to a recent Times-Mirror survey of the working press, one of the nation's best-liked political figures among journalists. They led The New Republic to gush, in its 1988 endorsement, that "since, for Gore, language is an instrument of a disciplined intelligence, the character of our entire public discourse would be enhanced" by his presidency.
And Gore's journalistic experience provides him with one more way to differentiate himself from his opposite number in the current campaign. While Al Gore was returning from Vietnam to become an investigative journalist, Dan Quayle was writing features for the Indiana Guardsman, house organ of the Indiana National Guard.
[As published in the Nashville Scene, September 17, 1992. © 1992 by E. Thomas Wood.]
John David Scobey Sr. (1923-2008) |
Joseph R. 'Joe' Simpkins |
Irby C. Simpkins Jr. |
Joseph Landon Evins (1910-1984) |
Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994) |
Mary Elizabeth 'Tipper' Gore |
Albert Arnold 'Al' Gore Sr. (1907-1998) |
Roy M. Neel |
Nashville media |
Knowledge |
Elections: National offices |
Nashville-area commercial real estate |
Albert Arnold 'Al' Gore Jr. |
John Lawrence Seigenthaler |
Keel Hunt
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