Spawn: Every bit his father's son

"As some fathers inevitably began to insist on being the sole source of authority, their children became confused about their own roles in a family system that was severely stressed by the demands of the dominant, all-powerful father."

-Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

From literally the day he was born, Al Gore was wielded as a political tool, and honed for public office. When little Al arrived in 1948, his dad-then a congressman, eventually a senator-wanted to make the most of it. His Tennessee rival Estes Kefauver had gotten coverage only in the inside pages of the Nashville Tennessean for the recent birth of a daughter. The senior Gore would best him. "If I have a boy baby, I don't want the news buried inside the paper. I want it on page one, where it belongs." The Tennessean obliged, with a headline, "Well, Mr. Gore, Here HE Is-On Page 1."

And so began the life and public career of Albert Gore Jr. As two recent biographies of Gore-Bill Turque's Inventing Al Gore and Bob Zelnick's Gore: A Political Life-make plain, the vice president grew up in a Tennessee version of The Truman Show. Almost every major move in his life was decided on high by two parents who conceived of him-and perhaps even conceived him-as an instrument of their own ambition. "Albert and Pauline Gore made choices for their son with an eye to how each one would fit into a compelling pre-presidential narrative," Turque writes, "and important aspects of Gore's early years were routinely embroidered for public consumption." So much of the oddness of Gore, of the ferocity of his attacks, of the sheer, white-knuckled desperation with which he is running for president, can be attributed to his upbringing as the family's political drone, programmed to seek out and win high office.

Al Gore has had two important relationships with couples whose marriages have been devoted to power-the husband a self-made success from a humble background, the wife a talented, trail-blazing lawyer just as ambitious as her political partner. One of these couples, of course, is the Clintons. The other is his parents.

Albert Sr. was the son of a Scotch-Irish backwoods farmer in Possum Hollow, Tennessee. He first acquired political ambitions after seeing a cousin's campaign flyers tacked to utility poles and imagining his own picture in the same place. He worked his way through college and began ascending the political ladder, reaching his height when he had a shot at the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 1956. When a deal to give him the nomination fell apart and threw the choice open to convention delegates, according to a witness quoted by Turque, Gore tore through the convention hall seeking supporters in a frenzy: "I have never seen before or since such a complete, total example of a man so completely and absolutely wild with ambition. It had literally changed his features."

Most observers considered his wife, Pauline, the politically shrewder and more calculating half of the couple. She was one of the first women ever to graduate from Vanderbilt Law School, but was frank about her decision to give up a career to become a political wife: "I was not only ambitious for him, but for myself too." In the late 1950s and '60s, she became one of the most active socialites in Washington, often handing off care of little Al. (He boarded as a senior at St. Alban's, even though it was just minutes away from the Gore apartment at the Fairfax Hotel.) Of course, her ambitions extended to her son. Before a 1988 debate in Iowa, Turque reports, she passed Al a note reminding him, "Smile, Relax, Attack." Thanks, Mom!

Gore's parents promoted him in the press-"He's a Budding Politician," blared a headline in the Knoxville News-Sentinel about the six-year-old Gore-and introduced him to the world of high Washington. Turque writes, "As he marched through his cameos at dinner parties and other Washington social gatherings, he was less a kid than a miniature grown-up, working the room on his parents' behalf." The most trying part of his training came in the summers, when his father insisted he visit Tennessee (to sink roots in the state) and work the family farm to develop discipline. Al was put in the care of the Gore tenant farmers and given backbreaking, almost abusive tasks, such as clearing a field using just a hand axe.

His duty didn't end there. If Bill Clinton tap-danced around serving in Vietnam in an effort to preserve his "viability within the system," Al Gore volunteered in an attempt to preserve his father's. He campaigned with the senior Gore in 1970 wearing his uniform. "He felt by helping his dad and campaigning with his dad that that was the greatest thing he as an individual could do to stop the war," a Gore friend told Zelnick. It wasn't enough, as Gore Sr. was swept out in the backlash against his association with the new antiwar, pro-civil-rights (and pro-busing) liberalism. "I told the truth as I saw it," Gore's dad said on election night. "The causes for which we fought are not dead. The truth shall rise again!"