| With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff |
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Sunday August 20, 2000; 9:35 AM EDT
Gore's Dad Ordered Him to Seek White House, Book Alleges
When then-Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Jr. made his first bid for the White House in 1988, it was after his father, Albert Gore Sr., ordered him to do so, a new book on the vice president alleges.
"I want to see you elected president before I die," Gore Sr. told his 38-year-old son in a heart-to-heart conversation during the 1986 Christmas break, reports Washington Post writer David Maraniss in his new biography, "The Prince of Tennessee: The Rise of Al Gore."
Maraniss reveals that Gore's father "took his son downstairs alone, and simply told him" that he wanted him to run for president while he was still alive, putting immense pressure on the young politician to launch his premature 1988 White House bid. Gore Sr. died in 1998.
The insider information comes from more than 300 interviews Maraniss conducted for his book, including four lengthy sit-downs with the vice president himself. What reportedly emerges is a portrait of a dutiful son who idolized his father and would do anything to please him.
The image of Gore as a "Daddy's boy" is particularly intriguing in light of similar charges leveled recently by President Clinton - not at Gore, but at GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush.
The week before the GOP convention Clinton characterized Bush's rationale for making his own White House bid with these words:
"The message of the Bush campaign is just that, 'How bad can I be? I've been governor of Texas. My daddy was president. ..."