The Vice President, Washington

Well, summer is here. And it's time for the annual Gore Family Summer Reading List!

It's an old Gore family tradition -- I remember back during my Harvard days (this was before I voluntarily enlisted in the Army and served my country for 14 long months in Vietnam; others made different choices during those troubled times, and I'm not judging, but where, exactly, was Dick Gephardt during all of this??) Mom and Dad would make up a list of books to be read during the summer. Some years, it was heavy with social policy (I remember reading a paperback of Silent Spring in 1965 -- oh, Rusty! The nightmares!) and some years it was filled with lighter fare (Mom went through a strange Valley of the Dolls period).

Tipper and I, of course, have compiled a list every year, and ever since the girls were old enough to come up with titles other than Misty of Chincoteague they've been included too. Little Al -- not so little any more -- keeps dis- appointing us, though. Last year, he sneaked The Turner Diaries onto the list (Tipper and I thought it was about Ike and Tina, which, in a way, I guess it is) and this year he tried to pull the wool over our eyes with something called The Kiss, which we were suspicious of the moment he mentioned it. Suf- fice it to say, Rusty, it's not acceptable Gore Family Summer Reading fare, and although Little Al insists that "if it's good enough for Oprah's Book Club, it's good enough for us," we're not including it. I never thought I'd say it, but I wish he could be more like Chelsea Clinton.

So, on to the list.

Karenna, who, as you know, is an editor at Slate.com (following in her father's footsteps! I was a journalist, too, for 9 months in Vietnam), Michael Kinsley's on-line publication, recommends Ken Auletta's The Highwaymen, which she says is somewhat biased against her boss, Bill Gates (personal friend!), but is nonetheless a "great portrait of some of the people my dad wants to regulate." And how. It's a survey of the moguls in the entertainment industry (which Tipper and I tried to regulate a few years ago, and now want to regu- late again) and the information superhighway (which I've always consistently wanted to regulate a lot).

Mom chimed in with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, which I tried to remind her was on her list last year (and, oddly, the year before) but she pretended she hadn't heard me. Dad suggested When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and when I asked why, just chuckled and said I'd find out "one snowy evening in New Hampshire." So I asked him for another title. When he mentioned Dealing with the Ultimate Disappointment: Losing and Surviv- ing! I thought it best to laugh politely and call them earlier next time, before the "sun is over the yardarm."

Tipper had a host of great selections, all reflecting her eclectic reading tastes. For starters, she recommends Articles of Impeachment: A Constitutional Approach (Yale Law School Press: 1972) and Presidential Impairment and the Law (University of Chicago Press: 1978). She's spending the summer "getting prepared," as she puts it, "to preempt the primaries," whatever that means. I think she worries too much. I tried to get her to read the new publishing sensation, The Bible Code, which purports to decipher the hidden prophecies in the Old Testament, but she just laughed it off.

"But Tipper," I said, "the author claims to have predicted Rabin's assassina- tion." And I showed her how he had decoded a section of the Hebrew text to reveal the message "Clinton President."

"What does it predict about you?" she asked. When I looked myself up in the index, I found that the author had decoded a section of the text to reveal the message "Gore Tennessee."

"He predicts that I'm from Tennessee." She went back to her book. Later, when I asked her to recommend light reading, she added The Prince. Tipper's an intellectual even in the summer!

As for my titles, I'm going to reread both Reinventing Government and Earth in the Balance -- I know, I know, I wrote those books, so why am I re-reading them? Well, for one thing, I discover new things every time I pick them up, and for another, I'm preparing to write a third book and don't want to repeat myself. My new book is going to be called, simply, Destiny: Follow Me into the Future, A Blueprint for America to Build an Environmentally Balanced Bridge to the 21st Information Century and Beyond for Our Children's Sakes and Their Children's Futures with a foreword by General Colin Powell (that last bit is still unconfirmed; but I'm hopeful!).

See you at Barnes & Noble!

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