Will the Real Al Gore Please Stand Up?
Consistently Inconsistent: A Brief History of Gore's Positions on the Issues
While it is obvious that President Bill Clinton would rather take polls than positions, many liberals have portrayed Vice President Al Gore as a principled alternative.
But what exactly are Gore's principles? The Gore of the '90s is significantly different from the Gore of the '80s. And there's no telling who the Gore of 2000 and beyond will be.
On which positions has Gore changed over the years? A better question would be: which ideals hasn't Gore sacrificed for political expediency?
The following are some examples of Gore's ever-growing list of inconsistencies on important questions facing America.
Al Gore on Abortion
Al Gore claims to be "pro-choice." He's right— he chooses his views on abortion depending on what is politically advantageous at any given time.
In 1997, in a speech to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), Gore outlined his loyalty to the "pro-choice" forces:
"The right to choose is fundamental. And on behalf of President Clinton, I vow to you that we will never let anyone take that away." (New York Post 1/23/97)
The "fundamental" right to abortion must not have been self-apparent to Gore in his congressional days. As a representative from 1977 to 1984, he had an 84 percent pro-life record, according to the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).
Gore’s pro-life stance included support for the "Siljander Amendment," which supported giving civil rights protection to fetuses.
In 1987, Senator Gore wrote in a letter to a constituent: "In my opinion, it is wrong to spend federal funds for what is arguably the taking of a human life." When a confused aide as recently as August 1999 reiterated Gore’s opposition to Medicaid funding of abortion, a controversy erupted and Gore reversed himself.
Apparently, Gore has once again changed his "principles" in order to fit with the Democratic orthodoxy.
Al Gore on the Economy
In the 1992 Vice-Presidential debate, Gore attacked George Bush and Dan Quayle for the economy’s performance:
“The experience that George Bush and Dan Quayle have been talking about includes the worst economic performance since the Great Depression.” Washington Times (7/12/1999)
However, Gore has recently acknowledged a report by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which states, “The economic expansion that began in April 1991 is now the second largest on record.”
So, the true start of the current boom began 21 months before Clinton and Gore entered the White House!
Al Gore has also tried to make a name for himself by “Re-inventing Government”— but he is even less of an inventor than a historian. When Al Gore says he's for cutting wasteful spending, we should remember he cast the tie-breaking vote for the largest tax increase in American history.
Al Gore on Tobacco
At the 1996 Democratic National Convention, Gore made an impassioned speech (believed to be the best of his career) in which he used the death of his sister by lung cancer to attack the tobacco industry:
“Three thousand young people will start smoking tomorrow. One thousand of th
Al Gore on Gays in the Military
Al Gore has been bending over backwards to gain the support of the radical gay lobby, who have been pushing for an end to ban on homosexuals openly serving in the armed forces. To demonstrate his support for their agenda, Gore promised to end the policy and declared that before he would appoint anyone to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they would also have to support his views.
Scarcely had he announced this litmus test when he started backpeddling on it. After all, such American heroes as Ret. Generals Norman Schwartzkopf and Colin Powell— former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff— would not make muster. Gore now says that his appointees would not be subject to such a litmus test, only that they would obey the orders of their President and Commander-in-Chief
Al Gore on the Environment
At first glance, Al Gore’s support for environmental legislation seems unequivocal. In his book, Earth in the Balance, Gore equates those who oppose radical environmental regulation to Nazis:
“Today the evidence of an environmental Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.”
He believes that he and other like-thinking “environmentalists” are resistance fighters against evil corporate America:
“It is not merely in the service of analogy that I have referred so often to the struggles against Nazi and communist totalitarianism, because I believe that the emerging effort to save the environment is a continuation of these struggles.”
He even went so far as to propose “completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five year period.”
Additionally, Gore is openly hostile to any growth in world population, and even advocates extreme means toward that end.
“Any child born into the hugely consumptionist way of life so common in the industrial world will have an impact that is, on average, many times more destructive than that of a child born in the developing world.” Earth in the Balance
—Al Gore, father of four, commenting on the destructive nature of children in modern nations.
“We’re actually beginning to experience some good news around the world with the beginnings of a stabilization in world population … But the momentum in the demographic system is such that we’re inevitably going to go to 8 or 9 billion. The question is whether these changes [in reproductive habits] will keep us from going to 10, 12, 14 billion.” Quoted in Washington Times (10/27/97)
—Gore, talking to a group of 100 weathermen about the “success” of abortion and birth control in Third World countries, and encouraging the proliferation of the use of such “solutions.”
And as we all know, Gore is full of hot air when it comes to the issue of “Global Warming”:
“You may have been seeing on the te
Al Gore on Farming
Al Gore, who has not only trumpeted the fact that his family dealt in tobacco, but who has also recently claimed to have “clean[ed] out hog waste with a shovel” and “plow[ed] a steep hillside with a team of mules” in his youth, is apparently not afraid to sacrifice his roots in the name of utopian environmentalism.
According to Dennis Avery of the Journal of Commerce, the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, which Gore helped negotiate, would mean a 75 percent surge in energy prices on machinery and fertilizer. The treaty would also have imposed ceilings on crop yields. In the meantime, countries like China, India, Argentina, and Brazil would not be held to the same standards.
If Vice President Gore has such environmental ambitions, will our farmers be able to survive President Gore?
Al Gore on Character
In the 1992 Vice-Presidential debate, Gore attacked George Bush and Dan Quayle for the economy’s performance:
“The experience that George Bush and Dan Quayle have been talking about includes the worst economic performance since the Great Depression.” Washington Times (7/12/1999)
However, Gore has recently acknowledged a report by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which states, “The economic expansion that began in April 1991 is now the second largest on record.”
So, the true start of the current boom began 21 months before Clinton and Gore entered the White House!
Al Gore has also tried to make a name for himself by “Re-inventing Government”— but he is even less of an inventor than a historian. When Al Gore says he's for cutting wasteful spending, we should remember he cast the tie-breaking vote for the largest tax increase in American history.
Al Gore on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty signed by President Bill Clinton flopped in the U.S. Senate in 1999. Senators objected that the treaty was poorly written, and would merely allow rogue states to develop and enhance their nuclear weapons while the United States would be unable to refine its own defense capabilities.
Al Gore, with the rest of the Clinton Administration, took the Senate to task for their opposition. Moreover, he has continued to support its ratification. Says his web site on October 14, 1999: “I’ve worked on thsi for 20 years because, unless we get this one right, nothing else matters.”
But it was not so long ago that Al Gore opposed the ban on the same grounds, even criticizing his Democrat colleagues for supporting it. At a Democratic Presidential Forum on September 27, 1988 sponsored by the “Stop the Arms Race” PAC, he stated:
Well, just as President John Kennedy made our world safer by getting a treaty banning atmospheric explosions, I would seek a treaty with the Soviety Union banning underground explosions as well. But before doing so, I would pin down the answers to two questions taht are important to our national security. First of all, can we firmly verify whether or not the Soviet Union is exploding low-yield tests on its territory? . . . we need the answer before the test ban rather than after.
More dramatically, Gore followed this up with searing criticism of fellow Democratb in the Washington Postof February 22, 1988 who had propsoed a ban on the flight-testing of missiles:
They took positions that are wildly out of touch with what mainstream Democratic voters believe . . . That’s not exaggerated political rhetoric, that is absolutely the case. The very idea of having a complete ban on all flight-testing missiles when we rely on deterrence for the survival of our civilization.
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