Al Gore quotations

Barack Obama is telling us exactly what he will do: launch a bold new economic plan to restore America’s greatness. Fight for smarter government that trusts the market but protects us against its excesses. Enact policies that are pro-choice, pro-education and pro-family. Establish a foreign policy that is smart as well as strong. Provide health care for all and solutions for the climate crisis.

So why is this election so close?

Well, I know something about close elections, so let me offer you my opinion.

I believe this election is close today mainly because the forces of the status quo are desperately afraid of the change Barack Obama represents.

"After the last 8 years, even out dogs and cats know that elections matter."

Al Gore, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MX4wzG2Jds

"For there is another Axis of Evil in the world: poverty and ignorance; disease and environmental disorder; corruption and political oppression. We may well put down terror in its present manifestations. But if we do not attend to the larger fundamentals as well, then the ground is fertile and has been seeded for the next generation of those born to hate us, who will hold these things up before the world's poor and dispossessed, and say that all these things are in our image, and rekindle the war we are now hoping to snuff out."

Al Gore February 12th 2002

In looking back over the last eight years, I can tell you that we have already learned one important fact since the year 2000: take it from me, elections matter. If you think the next appointments to our Supreme Court are important, you know that elections matter. If you live in the city of New Orleans, you know that elections matter. If you or a member of your family are serving in the active military, the National Guard or Reserves, you know that elections matter. If you’re a wounded veteran, you know that elections matter. If you lost your job, if you’re struggling with your mortgage, you know that elections matter. If you care about a clean environment, if you want a government that protects you instead of special interests, you know that elections matter. If you care about food safety, if you like a T on your BLT, you know that elections matter. If you bought poisoned, lead-filled toys from China or adulterated medicine made in China, if you bought tainted pet food made in China, you know that elections matter! After the last eight years, even our dogs and cats have learned that elections matter.

And this election matters more than ever because America needs change more than ever.

Al Gore June 16th 2008

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens--Democrats and Republicans alike--to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped--one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint.

The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically - and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: "To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between President and Congress."

This is precisely the "disrespect" for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case.

It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

For example, the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer--even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.

This shameful exercise of power overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War and has been observed by every president since then - until now. These practices violate the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture, not to mention our own laws against torture.

The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.

Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons - registered a complaint to his home office about the senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: "This material is useless - we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful."

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?

The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution."

The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance.

For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it.

Similarly, the Executive Branch claimed that it could unilaterally imprison American citizens without giving them access to review by any tribunal. The Supreme Court disagreed, but the President engaged in legal maneuvers designed to prevent the Court from providing meaningful content to the rights of its citizens.

A conservative jurist on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Executive Branch's handling of one such case seemed to involve the sudden abandonment of principle "at substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts."

As a result of its unprecedented claim of new unilateral power, the Executive Branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk. The stakes for America's representative democracy are far higher than has been generally recognized.

These claims must be rejected and a healthy balance of power restored to our Republic. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of our democracy may well undergo a radical transformation.

For more than two centuries, America's freedoms have been preserved in part by our founders' wise decision to separate the aggregate power of our government into three co-equal branches, each of which serves to check and balance the power of the other two.

On more than a few occasions, the dynamic interaction among all three branches has resulted in collisions and temporary impasses that create what are invariably labeled "constitutional crises." These crises have often been dangerous and uncertain times for our Republic. But in each such case so far, we have found a resolution of the crisis by renewing our common agreement to live under the rule of law.

The principle alternative to democracy throughout history has been the consolidation of virtually all state power in the hands of a single strongman or small group who together exercise that power without the informed consent of the governed.

It was in revolt against just such a regime, after all, that America was founded. When Lincoln declared at the time of our greatest crisis that the ultimate question being decided in the Civil War was "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure," he was not only saving our union but also was recognizing the fact that democracies are rare in history. And when they fail, as did Athens and the Roman Republic upon whose designs our founders drew heavily, what emerges in their place is another strongman regime.

There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents.

When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said:

"[TheessentialprinciplesofourGovernment] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others.

But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.

There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, "The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to "last for the rest of our lives." So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is--ironically--accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

This same pattern has characterized the effort to silence dissenting views within the Executive Branch, to censor information that may be inconsistent with its stated ideological goals, and to demand conformity from all Executive Branch employees.

For example, CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases.

Ironically, that is exactly what happened to FBI officials in the 1960s who disagreed with J. Edgar Hoover's view that Dr. King was closely connected to Communists. The head of the FBI's domestic intelligence division said that his effort to tell the truth about King's innocence of the charge resulted in he and his colleagues becoming isolated and pressured. "It was evident that we had to change our ways or we would all be out on the street.... The men and I discussed how to get out of trouble. To be in trouble with Mr. Hoover was a serious matter. These men were trying to buy homes, mortgages on homes, children in school. They lived in fear of getting transferred, losing money on their homes, as they usually did. ... so they wanted another memorandum written to get us out of the trouble that we were in."

The Constitution's framers understood this dilemma as well, as Alexander Hamilton put it, "a power over a man's support is a power over his will." (Federalist No. 73)

Soon, there was no more difference of opinion within the FBI. The false accusation became the unanimous view. In exactly the same way, George Tenet's CIA eventually joined in endorsing a manifestly false view that there was a linkage between al Qaeda and the government of Iraq.

In the words of George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded.

Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend the Administration's eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that if it had conducted this program prior to 9/11, they would have found out the names of some of the hijackers.

Tragically, he apparently still doesn't know that the Administration did in fact have the names of at least 2 of the hijackers well before 9/11 and had available to them information that could have easily led to the identification of most of the other hijackers. And yet, because of incompetence in the handling of this information, it was never used to protect the American people.

It is often the case that an Executive Branch beguiled by the pursuit of unchecked power responds to its own mistakes by reflexively proposing that it be given still more power. Often, the request itself it used to mask accountability for mistakes in the use of power it already has.

Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. Many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this President means that the next President will have unchecked power as well. And the next President may be someone whose values and belief you do not trust. And this is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this President has done. If this President's attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes unquestioned, our Constitutional design of checks and balances will be lost. And the next President or some future President will be able, in the name of national security, to restrict our liberties in a way the framers never would have thought possible.

The same instinct to expand its power and to establish dominance characterizes the relationship between this Administration and the courts and the Congress.

In a properly functioning system, the Judicial Branch would serve as the constitutional umpire to ensure that the branches of government observed their proper spheres of authority, observed civil liberties and adhered to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the unilateral executive has tried hard to thwart the ability of the judiciary to call balls and strikes by keeping controversies out of its hands - notably those challenging its ability to detain individuals without legal process -- by appointing judges who will be deferential to its exercise of power and by its support of assaults on the independence of the third branch.

The President's decision to ignore FISA was a direct assault on the power of the judges who sit on that court. Congress established the FISA court precisely to be a check on executive power to wiretap. Yet, to ensure that the court could not function as a check on executive power, the President simply did not take matters to it and did not let the court know that it was being bypassed.

The President's judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure that the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a longtime supporter of a powerful executive - a supporter of the so-called unitary executive, which is more properly called the unilateral executive. Whether you support his confirmation or not - and I do not - we must all agree that he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial deference to executive agency rulemaking.

And the Administration has supported the assault on judicial independence that has been conducted largely in Congress. That assault includes a threat by the Republican majority in the Senate to permanently change the rules to eliminate the right of the minority to engage in extended debate of the President's judicial nominees. The assault has extended to legislative efforts to curtail the jurisdiction of courts in matters ranging from habeas corpus to the pledge of allegiance. In short, the Administration has demonstrated its contempt for the judicial role and sought to evade judicial review of its actions at every turn.

But the most serious damage has been done to the legislative branch. The sharp decline of congressional power and autonomy in recent years has been almost as shocking as the efforts by the Executive Branch to attain a massive expansion of its power.

I was elected to Congress in 1976 and served eight years in the house, 8 years in the Senate and presided over the Senate for 8 years as Vice President. As a young man, I saw the Congress first hand as the son of a Senator. My father was elected to Congress in 1938, 10 years before I was born, and left the Senate in 1971.

The Congress we have today is unrecognizable compared to the one in which my father served. There are many distinguished Senators and Congressmen serving today. I am honored that some of them are here in this hall. But the legislative branch of government under its current leadership now operates as if it is entirely subservient to the Executive Branch.

Moreover, too many Members of the House and Senate now feel compelled to spend a majority of their time not in thoughtful debate of the issues, but raising money to purchase 30 second TV commercials.

There have now been two or three generations of congressmen who don't really know what an oversight hearing is. In the 70's and 80's, the oversight hearings in which my colleagues and I participated held the feet of the Executive Branch to the fire - no matter which party was in power. Yet oversight is almost unknown in the Congress today.

The role of authorization committees has declined into insignificance. The 13 annual appropriation bills are hardly ever actually passed anymore. Everything is lumped into a single giant measure that is not even available for Members of Congress to read before they vote on it.

Members of the minority party are now routinely excluded from conference committees, and amendments are routinely not allowed during floor consideration of legislation.

In the United States Senate, which used to pride itself on being the "greatest deliberative body in the world," meaningful debate is now a rarity. Even on the eve of the fateful vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd famously asked: "Why is this chamber empty?"

In the House of Representatives, the number who face a genuinely competitive election contest every two years is typically less than a dozen out of 435.

And too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to continued access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good side of those who have the money to give; and, in the case of the majority party, the whole process is largely controlled by the incumbent president and his political organization.

So the willingness of Congress to challenge the Administration is further limited when the same party controls both Congress and the Executive Branch.

The Executive Branch, time and again, has co-opted Congress' role, and often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of its own power.

Look for example at the Congressional role in "overseeing" this massive four year eavesdropping campaign that on its face seemed so clearly to violate the Bill of Rights. The President says he informed Congress, but what he really means is that he talked with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the top leaders of the House and Senate. This small group, in turn, claimed that they were not given the full facts, though at least one of the intelligence committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to VP Cheney and placed a copy in his own safe.

Though I sympathize with the awkward position in which these men and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program.

Moreover, in the Congress as a whole--both House and Senate--the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption.

The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg that threatens the integrity of the entire legislative branch of government.

It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by our Executive Branch which now threatens a radical transformation of the American system.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be.

But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.

We the people are--collectively--still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We--as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"--must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.

Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will."

The revolutionary departure on which the idea of America was based was the audacious belief that people can govern themselves and responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. This insight proceeded inevitably from the bedrock principle articulated by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke: "All just power is derived from the consent of the governed."

The intricate and carefully balanced constitutional system that is now in such danger was created with the full and widespread participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were, back in the day, widely-read newspaper essays, and they represented only one of twenty-four series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia.

Indeed, when the Convention had done its best, it was the people - in their various States - that refused to confirm the result until, at their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the document sent forward for ratification.

And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution.

And here there is cause for both concern and great hope. The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television - a distracting and absorbing medium which sees determined to entertain and sell more than it informs and educates.

Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is applicable in a new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements.

And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.

The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.

The Administration vigorously asserts its power to maintain the secrecy of its operations. After all, the other branches can't check an abuse of power if they don't know it is happening.

For example, when the Administration was attempting to persuade Congress to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the House and Senate raised concerns about the cost and design of the program. But, rather than engaging in open debate on the basis of factual data, the Administration withheld facts and prevented the Congress from hearing testimony that it sought from the principal administration expert who had compiled information showing in advance of the vote that indeed the true cost estimates were far higher than the numbers given to Congress by the President.

Deprived of that information, and believing the false numbers given to it instead, the Congress approved the program. Tragically, the entire initiative is now collapsing- all over the country- with the Administration making an appeal just this weekend to major insurance companies to volunteer to bail it out.

To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House who had no scientific training. And today one of the leading scientific experts on global warming in NASA has been ordered not to talk to members of the press and to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the Executive Branch can monitor and control his discussions of global warming.

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march--when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, "The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will."

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President. We have had a fresh demonstration of how an independent investigation by a special counsel with integrity can rebuild confidence in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, shown neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the Executive Branch has violated other laws.

Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the President.

Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of wrongdoing--especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch authority in the sensitive areas of national security.

Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive--and not just superficial--hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed.

Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.

Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.

It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.

I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I can feel it in this hall.

As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

Al Gore

"I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and recognition of this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency."

Al Gore October 12th 2007

It is also very important for us to recognize that here in the United States, we have a lot of unfinished business to do. Because our strength as a nation depends upon our ability to renew our democracy, every four years, every two years. We have one of those exercises underway right now. And this election on November the seventh is not only an opportunity to chose a President, but to chose a direction. I believe, my friends, that this choice is one of the most important that we have ever faced in our long history. Working people especially have a lot at stake. The other side has tried to tell the country that we were a whole lot better off eight years ago than we are today.

(CROWD BOOS)

And I just don't believe it. Your reaction is the same as mine because I remember what it was like back then. We had the biggest deficits in history, our debt had been multiplied four times over, we were trickled down, I heard that phrase over there, an old phrase, still applicable. And, you know, the unemployment rate, the crime rate, the family break up rate, all of those signs were telling us we were headed in the wrong direction. And we've still got a lot of problems. But I'm telling you this, because we have put working people first, we have seen some progress. Because in the last eight years what's happened is we've replaced the biggest deficits with the biggest surpluses, instead of ballooning the national debt, we've been paying down the debt, instead of high unemployment, we now have the lowest African-American unemployment ever measured in America, the lowest Latino unemployment even measured in America, twenty two million new jobs and officially the strongest economy in the two hundred and twenty four year history of the United States of America.

But it's not good enough. I'm not satisfied when there are too many people who have been left behind. I'm not satisfied when there is still discrimination. I'm not satisfied when there's still inadequate housing, when there's still too many schools that are inadequate, when the environment still needs to be cleaned up, when too many people still don't have health care, I'm not satisfied, we can do better, my approach is: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

We're going to do much better. This election is not an award for past performance. I'm not asking any of you for your support on the basis of the economy we have. I'm asking for your support on the basis of the better, fairer, stronger economy that we're going to create together over the next four years. And we've got to start with a hard look at what our economic policies are all about.

Now there is as clear and stark a contrast in this election as I have ever seen in my lifetime of voting. Because what we've got on the one side is a proposal to change in the right direction, to put the middle class families of America first, to balance the budget, and keep our economy strong, to pay down the national debt so that it's not a burden on our children and grandchildren, and to invest in education and health care and the environment and in retirement security.

On the other side, we have a proposal from the Bush-Cheney group that wants to squander the surplus on a massive tax cut for the wealthy in this country, almost half of it will go to the wealthiest one percent, and they try to talk about fuzzy math, let me tell you. You can take their own numbers, take their own numbers, I don't believe in their numbers, but you just take their own numbers for purposes of argument, and what you will find, and they cannot dispute this - - I challenge them to dispute this, I challenge them to put a pencil to paper, and challenge this. Here's what their own numbers say: they are proposing to spend more money on a tax cut for the wealthiest one percent than all of the new spending they are proposing for health care, education and national defense all put together.

It's not a question of my opponent's heart or my heart. It's a question of priorities and our nation's heart. Where do we want to invest our treasure? In my faith tradition, in the book of Matthew it says: "Where your heart is, there also will be your treasure". I don't believe that America's heart is into investing almost half of all of this massive tax cut with the wealthiest of the wealthy. I think America's heart is with the children who need better schools, and a cleaner environment, and adequate health care. I believe America's heart is with seniors who are having too hard a time paying for their prescription drugs.

Now, let's talk also not only about our hearts, but also about hard-nosed common sense. The third biggest item in the federal budget today is interest on the national debt. We get nothing for it. We get to maintain the full faith and credit of the United States of America, and that's awfully important, but that money, in terms of what we get back above and beyond that, is essentially wasted every single year. And it's the biggest item of all.

Now, my plan calls for not only balancing the budget every single year, not only for paying down the national debt every single year, but for completely eliminating the national debt by the year 2012, which means that we will completely eliminate that third biggest item of federal spending in the entire budget, which means we'll have a stronger economy and a better chance to invest in our future.

And where tax cuts are concerned, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but the difference is he targets the tax cuts to the very wealthy; I target the tax cuts to middle class families who most need tax cuts. Because middle class families are the ones who are having a hard time making car payments and mortgage payments and making ends meet and doing right by their kids. They're the ones who have the hardest time paying taxes and that's why I want to give the tax cuts to middle class families in this country.

And by eliminating those debt payments, that's another way we can reduce the size of the federal government. I presided over the streamlining "Reinventing Government" program, that's reduced the federal government to the smallest size since President Kennedy's administration. And with this program I've outlined, as a percentage of our national income, it will be the smallest it's been in fifty years. The other side would actually expand the role of government, because they have proposed not only a huge $1.6 trillion tax cut, mostly to the wealthy, but also a $1 trillion dollar social security privatization proposal. Now let me tell you how that works. Let me tell you how it works. First of all, let me tell you how mine works, then and I'm going to tell you how theirs works.

Now, if you take a trillion dollars, and promise it to two different groups, and it doesn't show up anywhere in the budget...

CROWD: Fuzzy Math!

GORE: Fuzzy math.

(CROWD CHEERS)

GORE: Fuzzy math. Are you with me?

(CROWD CHEERS)

GORE: Now let me give you another example of fuzzy math. I want to talk about health care. And I want to talk about what needs to be done on health care in this country. We've got 44 million people who are uninsured. Millions of them are children. We have some wonderful healthcare institutions in our country. Great doctors and nurses and health care professionals. But I believe it is time, long past time, to make some significant changes. I will pledge to you, that if you elect me President, within these next four years, I will guarantee that every single child in this country gets high quality, affordable health care.

How do we do that? We make it a priority. And this election is about priorities. It's not about me, it's not about my opponent, it's about you, it's about your family, it's about our country, it's about our priorities. And when you use the word "priorities" you're really talking about choices concerning our future.

Now you can see my priorities in what I'm proposing and what I fought for for the last twenty four years, in the House, in the Senate, and in the Executive Branch. And you can see my opponent's priorities in what he has done over the last five years as Governor of Texas. In the debate two weeks ago - - or last week, I'm sorry - - he said that the number of uninsured children - - or Americans has been going up in the United States, while it's been going down in Texas. Did I hear that wrong, or is that what he said?

(CROWD AGREES WITH GORE)
...

You know, I was in - - I was talking with John Dingell, last year at an open meeting, where a doctor told a story, I've mentioned this story before where he had a man, a patient come into his emergency room, go into full cardiac arrest, the patient's heart stopped right there, and the doctor rushed and got the defibrillator and his nurses and brought this person back to life. They sent the bill to the HMO and the HMO refused to pay the bill because they said it wasn't an emergency. Well, to some - - to those on the other side, maybe the absence of a heart isn't considered an emergency, but to us it is. And that's why we need a health care Patients Bill of Rights.

It's about your heart.

And make no mistake about it-the big drug companies, who are charging seniors more than anybody else even though their profits are higher than any other industry's, and the insurance companies and HMOs who are opposed to the Patients Bill of Rights, even though it is hurting the quality of medical care for Americans, both of those industries are supporting my opponent, and they're supporting Debbie Stabenow's opponent. And they are financing a massive advertising campaign that is calculated to try to mislead you into thinking up is down and inside is outside and right is wrong. So pass the word from person to person - - as Debbie says, "from one to one to one" - - to get the truth of this matter out there. The drug companies and the insurance companies and HMOs, the oil companies and others, they have a priority in this election, and it is to make sure that your voice is diluted by their money and power and influence. That's why we need campaign finance reform, my friends. That's why I'll make the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform bill the first one I send to the Congress if you elect me President.

And make no mistake about it. If your top priority - - if priority number one, two, three and four is a massive tax cut, mostly to the wealthy, then you cannot make education priority number one. If you squander the surplus and give all of the available resources to a tax cut mostly to the wealthy, then schools get testing, and not much more. And we need much more. We need testing, yes. But we also need resources. And we need more teachers. And we need more parental involvement. And we need more high quality standards. And we need a bigger commitment to make sure they work.

And here's one other thing. I talked about tax cuts for the middle class, here's one that's part of my program. I want to make college tuition tax deductible, $10,000 per family, per year. So all middle class families can afford to send their kids to college.

Now, I want to close with two points.

Number one: in order for us to accomplish these goals that I've outlined here, we have to recognize that all of us have to come together. And that means standing up for one another. When somebody is involved in a struggle to get fairness in the workplace, we need to stand in solidarity with them. I'm for a ban on permanent striker replacements. We need to have the right to organize. It means that when there is discrimination on the basis of race, or ethnicity, or national origin, or who you select as your partner, we have to stand for what is right and what we know in our hearts. In the words of our Founders, who said all of us are created equal, and given by God certain rights that are inalienable. Not given by the government, given by our Creator. That's what I believe. And I believe that means we have to fight against all forms of discrimination, that's why we need a hate crimes law in this country. We've also got to recognize that all of us one under the skin, and that's why the rights as between men and women need to be equalized, and we need an equal day's pay for an equal day's work. Let us vow that never again will we allow ourselves to be divided on the basis of these artificial distinctions that are always used to the disadvantage of working people and middle class families.

Now, finally - - the outcome of this election will determine an awful lot. It'll determine the future of our country, the Congress is at stake, the Supreme Court is at stake. You know, some people say it doesn't make any difference who appoints the next three Justices of the Supreme Court. It makes a difference to Women's Rights, it makes a difference to Civil Rights, it makes a difference to the environment, it makes a difference to our federal system, it makes a difference to who we are as a nation.

And the outcome really is up to you. This is a close race. It's close here, it's close nationwide. Even up. So don't let anybody tell you that what you do and what you say will not determine the outcome. You personally might very well make the difference.

Now, as for my role, I want you to know this - - I've said this before, but I want to repeat it. I know full well that if you entrust me with the Presidency, I won't always be the most exciting politician, like Dennis Archer. But I will work hard for you every day and I will never let you down. And I will fight for you. Because I know this in my heart about the job of President. It is the only position in the Constitution that is filled by an individual who is given the responsibility to fight not just for one group or one area of the country or the wealthy and the well connected or the powerful. A President is charged with the responsibility to fight for all of the people, especially those who need a champion, who's willing to stand up and fight for you. That's why I'm running for President.

And I need your help. When you leave this place, I want you to consider it your personal mission to chart the future course of our nation for the next four years. The choice is between diverting the surplus and our resources and our destiny toward the old trickle down approach, or continuing a sound economic plan that will continue the prosperity, create more jobs, balance the budget, and invest in people, education, middle class tax cuts, health care, retirement security.

But it is up to you. When you leave this place, I want you to think long and hard about what you personally will say to one of your neighbors or one of your friends who, in an idle moment says: "I'm not sure who I'm going to vote for, what do you think?" I want you to arm yourselves, I want you to arm yourselves not only with the names Gore and Lieberman and Stabenow and Kilpatrick and all the other candidates that you support. I don't want you to just say "Vote for Al Gore". I want you to arm yourselves with the arguments about these issues that we've discussed here. Take some time to tell them that prosperity itself is on the ballot this fall.

Prosperity itself is at stake in this election. Jobs are at stake. Families are at stake. Health care, our schools, the environment - - they're at stake. Social Security is on the ballot this fall.

CROWD: Gore, Gore, Gore, Gore!

GORE: Medicare is on the ballot this fall. Prescription drugs are on the ballot this fall. Civil Rights are on the ballot this fall.

Now, after you have given your choice and after you have given them your reasons, then I want you to give something else. And this is the last thing I'm going to ask you for. It's something that is difficult for you to give. It's something that people hardly ever give any more. I want to ask you to open your hearts and push past any fear of disillusionment, push past any fear of disappointment, push past any fear of having a broken heart, once you have invested your heart in the outcome of this election and in your choice for the future of our nation. Too many good people with high ideals and strong dreams have themselves decided to remain at arm's length from the political process, because they believe their hearts are brittle. And they don't want to get too involved, because if they get their hopes up, their hopes might be shattered. If they get their dreams invested in a particular outcome, then they think they might be disappointed and they may not be able to handle it.

Hear me well: your hearts are not brittle. Our country is not brittle. Your future is at stake. We need you - - not only to give them your choice and to give them the reasons - - give them your passion. If anybody is cynical, if anybody says it doesn't make a difference who wins, it doesn't make a difference which agenda governs us over the next four years, it doesn't make a difference the direction we take, I want you to tell them: "Wait a minute! I know for a fact that it makes a difference. It makes a difference to me. It makes a difference to you. It makes a difference to your family." And one of the reasons is it makes a difference if you have a President who's willing to fight for you. I ask for your passion, I want your hearts, I want your vote, I want your enthusiasm, because I want to fight for you! I want to fight for your families! I want to fight for Michigan, and Detroit and your future! God bless you. Let's win this election!

Al Gore October 14th 2000
"The People, Not The Powerful 08"

This is a special day for our family, because Union has always been a special place for our family.

My uncle Everett, who passed away last year, went to Union. My uncle Whit's wife, Nell LaFon, taught at Union.

My mother has always said that her greatest regret is that she never actually received her Union diploma.

I'm told this is only the second time in Union's 177 years that you have granted a Baccalaureate Degree to someone who did not complete his or her coursework here.

The truth is, my mother not only skipped forward to law school, she earned her Union degree through a much harder course. She earned it through a lifetime of service to others.

My mother was born into a poor family here in West Tennessee -- at a time when poor girls weren't supposed to dream.

Her parents had married when they were just seventeen. Neither of them had the chance to get the education they wanted. Her father ran a small country store in Cold Corner -- in the First District of Weakley County in Northwest Tennessee - a store that went bust during the Great Depression.

What motivated my mother to strive on was not the dream of money, but the dream of opportunity.

As a young girl, she was deeply troubled by stories my grandfather told her about his struggle to help my grandmother and my great-grandmother inherit land that was rightly theirs. Instead, it went entirely to their brothers.

Women weren't supposed to own land in those days. They certainly weren't supposed to go to college. Those inequalities made a deep impression on my mother. So she set out to change them.

She started her education in a one-room schoolhouse in Cold Corner. And in her words, "it never occurred to me that I couldn't go to college. I just knew it was up to me to find a way."

She did find a way. She got a $100 loan from the Jackson Rotary Club - which she later repaid. She enrolled at Union in the fall of 1931, waiting tables at Miss Snipes' Restaurant in downtown Jackson to help pay her way. She insisted on bringing her blind sister, my aunt Thelma, with her to Union. She took notes and read lessons for both of them - something that would have been nearly impossible without the kindness and goodwill of her professors.

A lot has changed at Union since my mother's time. Back then, it was a small college with about 700 students, most of them from West Tennessee. Today it's a university with more than 2,500 students from all across America.

Back then, streetcars cost a nickel, taxis anywhere in Jackson cost a dime, and a year's tuition at Union was just ninety-nine dollars. Today - well, let's just say that tuition is a bit more than ninety-nine dollars.

A lot has changed in America as well. When my mother enrolled at Union, it wasn't long after women had won the right to vote in this country. The Tennessee Valley Authority hadn't even been created. Herbert Hoover was still in the White House - and millions of Americans faced crushing poverty.

There weren't many opportunities for a poor girl like Pauline LaFon to get an education.

But she dreamed of becoming a lawyer. And despite all the obstacles before her, she refused to let go of that dream. So after two years at Union, my mother came to Nashville and enrolled at Vanderbilt Law School.

This time, she scraped her way through by waiting tables at the old Andrew Jackson Hotel, working for 25-cent tips. She lived at the downtown YWCA for two dollars a week, took a trolley to her morning classes, and then rushed back to the Andrew Jackson for the dinner shift.

That's where she met my father, who had just started YMCA night law school -- even as he worked as Smith County Superintendent of Schools, and each day, had to wake up well before dawn to tend his crops.

Every night, after a long day of work and study, he faced an hour's drive to return from Nashville to Carthage on old Highway 70. So he went looking for coffee -- and he found it at the Andrew Jackson. He loved to tell the story of how the coffee didn't taste good unless it was poured by that beautiful young woman named Pauline LaFon.

From the day they met, my parents were partners. They studied together for the bar exam -- and passed it on the same day.

In fact, I remember them joking about who got the higher grade. If I interpreted the jokes correctly, my mother did.

When my mother graduated from Vanderbilt, it was virtually impossible for a woman to find a legal job in Nashville. So she left for Texarkana, and put up her shingle.

As far as we know, she was the only female attorney in Texarkana at the time; there were not very many in the entire nation. She practiced oil and gas law, and also took on divorce cases -- unprecedented for a female attorney back then.

The next year, my father persuaded her to come back as his wife. Soon after, he decided to run for Congress in the old Fourth District.

At that time, politicians' wives stayed far in the background. My father wanted my mother right up front with him. And my mother took as her role model Eleanor Roosevelt - who had made it respectable for women to be involved in a campaign. And so, in my mother's own words, "off I went, almost charting a new course."

It was lucky for my father that she did. There will never be a better campaigner than Pauline LaFon Gore.

In that first campaign, my mother would talk with any voter she could find, and speak at any club meeting that would have her.

She'd heard that in another election, the candidate had lost by just thirteen votes. So whenever she got tired, she kept thinking to herself, "thirteen votes."

She walked the dirt roads of the district -- from Franklin County to Clay County, and all points in between. On rainy days, she'd pull off her shoes and wade through the mud to reach people's homes.

That year, a lot of people supported my father's campaign because they saw my mother's heart -- how she listened to people, how she understood their concerns, and how she could speak with anyone.

The people she met on all those early campaigns formed a powerful personal bond of friendship with her, and many of them have helped our family for decades. Some of them are helping me in this election -- more than half a century later.

It was in 1952, during my father's first race for the Senate, that my mother's political skills truly came to the rescue. Some of you have heard me tell the story before.

My father was challenging a powerful incumbent, Senator Kenneth D. McKellar, who was the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. McKellar sought to remind the voters of his power to bring money to the state with his omnipresent slogan: "The thinking feller votes McKellar."

My father would never allow his supporters to tear down those McKellar signs. And so my mother came up with the perfect solution. Every time we found a sign that said "The thinking feller votes McKellar," we put a new sign directly underneath it: "Think some more and vote for Gore." Without that slogan, he might not have won the race.

And by the way, mom -- I'm still waiting for this year's slogan.

My mother has shown that same talent and tenacity in my campaigns. She used to tell a story about my first race in 1976, when an old friend and supporter of my father's came up to her and said: "Mrs. Gore, if your son is as good as his old man, we'll be for him." To which my mother replied that she had trained us both - and had done a better job on me, for she'd corrected some mistakes.

Of course, my mother was much more than a campaigner. She was my father's closest adviser. And when he took tough and controversial positions, such as his strong support for civil rights, and his opposition to the war in Vietnam -- positions that caused great tension among their colleagues and friends -- she always stood with him. She shared his conscience. And in all things large and small, she was his strength.

She has always believed in the power of education. After all, she had seen its transforming influence in her own life. She taught it to me and my sister Nancy -- and she taught it to my children, too. When she won a humanitarian award a couple of years ago, she used the money to set up a scholarship fund for aspiring college students from Smith County.

And I can think of no greater tribute to my mother's life and work than the Pauline LaFon Gore Scholarship that you are creating today - to give worthy students from West Tennessee the same Union education that my mother had.

She has always found ways to serve. During World War II, when my father resigned his seat in Congress to enlist, my mother helped with the war effort as well.

At that time, political wives in Washington were obliged to spend a lot of time calling on the wives of husbands who outranked theirs. The war - and the rationing of gasoline - put an end to that custom. And so my mother went to work.

At first, she volunteered for her friend and role model Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House, answering letters from those who poured their hearts out, looking for hope at a time of distress. She then volunteered at the Red Cross, interviewing young women who wanted to go overseas to help with the war effort.

She has always had that kind of energy. In 1970, after my father lost his Senate seat because he stood up against the Vietnam War, my mother picked up and returned to her legal career -- first at a firm she opened with my father, then as the managing partner at a large firm in Washington. During her law firm years, she always advised young women who were considering legal careers.

Maybe it was just her way of redeeming the struggles her mother and grandmother could never win in their time.

My mother has also been a loving grandmother - and now great-grandmother. One of my favorite stories took place about seven years ago, when Pauline LaFon Gore turned 80 years old. We were getting ready to have a big birthday party for he, and my son Albert asked her how old she was. As she has said, "I knew he would go up and down the street with my age, so I just said 39." And at that point Albert yelled out to my daughter Sarah, "Do you know that grandmother is younger than daddy?"

It's been said that "the mother's heart is the child's schoolroom." [Henry Ward Beecher]

I know that is true for me. For all my 52 years, my mother has been the greatest teacher I have ever had.

She taught me that through quiet dignity and determination, one woman could make all the difference.

She taught me that there are no doors that can't be opened - if you work hard enough and knock long enough.

She has passed on to me and my children a deep passion for learning - and a deep sense of obligation, to use that knowledge as a force for good in the world.

As long as I am privileged to serve this country, I will cherish the lessons she has taught me.

And as long as I live, I will be grateful to Union University - for starting my mother on her path in life, and now for granting her the diploma she first worked so hard for 70 years ago - the diploma she has earned in a shining lifetime of love, leadership, and service.

Al Gore April 10th 2000

Speech Transcript: Remarks to the Congressional Black Caucus
Wednesday, 03 January 2001
You know, in all seriousness, we face more than a new President and a new administration and new leadership of honored institutions. Here in Washington the House and Senate will be more closely divided than at any time in the history that any of us can personally remember. And across America there are real and continuing disagreements about the issues and about what is now past and about what lies ahead.

And now you must chose, as public servants, and as Americans, to heal our nation's divisions and move this country forward. I believe very deeply that we all must respect -- and wherever possible - - help President-elect Bush. Because from the moment he takes his solemn oath, a great responsibility will rest in his hands. And from the moment you take your solemn oath, building upon the one just administered here in this ceremony, you are charged with a special responsibility as well, one that you know in your heart and in your bones, because this institution has discharged that responsibility on behalf of the people of this country since its founding - - to lift up those who have been left out or locked out, to honor those who fought and marched and died to have their voices heard, and to secure the right to vote.

When you are the conscience of the Congress, you of course have to do your best to reach across party lines, but you also have to know when to draw the line. When you are the conscience of the Congress, you have to work to build majorities, but you also have to fight for human dignity. When you are the conscience of the Congress, you have to seek consensus, but you also have to seek justice and fundamental fairness.

On the great issues that you will face in the 107th Congress, you have to act from conviction and lead from your heart. You know full well that among your special responsibilities is a sacred one to all of those who took our advice last November and voted C.B.C.*

So, for them, when you walk onto the floor of the Congress, and you see their equities at stake, you have to vote C.B.C.

And so I ask you, the next time you see a crumbling school with desks crowded in the hallways and rain dripping through the roof, vote C.B.C.

The next time you see a sick child with no health insurance and a parent who cannot possibly afford her family's care, vote C.B.C.

The next time you see whole communities choking from pollution and environmental injustice, vote C.B.C.

The next time someone tries to shut down Affirmative Action instead of swinging open the doors of opportunity, I know you'll vote C.B.C.

The next time that anyone argues that even the most vicious and violent hate crimes are just like any other crimes, or that racial profiling is just a price that has to be paid, vote C.B.C.

And when I look at all these challenges that lie ahead I see the great promise of a country that is stronger and more prosperous than at any time in our history. I see how much good we can achieve. But the values we fought for together, the causes we have championed together, across the years and in the final days of the election, cannot be measured in votes or victors.

I am more grateful to the men and women of the C.B.C. and all of you and others who have lifted them up and made their careers and their prophesies and their struggles possible. I am more grateful than I can say to you. I look back across the distinguished line of leadership here and I see another close friend, who was your immediate past Chair, who did a truly outstanding job, Congressman Jim Clyburn, and I want to pay tribute to Jim Clyburn.

Your support was one of the greatest honors I have ever received in my life. I mean that from my heart. Because the struggle that you represent and that you embody is a struggle for more than fairness, more even than justice. It is a struggle in its deepest sense for redemption: redemption of this nation's history, redemption of this nation's soul. And so your support has been something that I have and will always cherish with all my heart. And I want you to know that I will always be there for you.

Seventeen days from now I leave the Vice Presidency full of love for my country, full of gratitude to its people and above all full of hope for our common future. And one reason is that I know in the 107th Congress you will carry the torch of liberty and strive each and every day to make America all it can be.

So I want to close with the words of the great Harlem poet, Langston Hughes:

"Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - -
...a land where liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe...
O let America be America again - -
The land that never has been yet - -
And yet must be - - the land where every man is free."

God bless and good luck in the 107th Congress with your outstanding leadership, the Congressional Black Caucus.

*The phrase "Vote CBC" is a reference to the speech Gore gave to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on September 16, 2000.

"Having spent 30 years as part of the political dialogue, I don't know why a 600-day campaign is taken as a given, and why people who aren't in it 600 days out, for the convenience of whatever brokers want to close the door and narrow the field and say 'This is it, now lets place your bets' -- If they want to do that, fine. I don't have to play that game."

Al Gore, 2007

One of the most important contributions of America to the world was the precision of our Founders in separating the relationship between God and government. God's role in establishing the basis for government, they believed, was to endow every individual with "certain unalienable rights" ---not to endow any particular leader with a divine right to exercise power over others.

Having replaced the divine right of kings with the divine rights of individuals, our Founders overthrew the monarchy and designed a self-government according to the strictures of reason. And they took special care to insulate the ongoing deliberations of democracy against the recombination of fear and dogma, by guarding against any effort by government to establish in law any trace of divine justification for the exercise of power.

They were keenly aware of the thin and permeable boundary between religious fervor and power-seeking political agendas. "A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction," wrote James Madison, but the new American nation would nevertheless be protected against the ungovernable combination of religious fervor and political power as long as the Constitution prohibited the federal government from establishing any particular creed as preeminent.

Al Gore, 'The Assault on Reason'

"The twentieth century has not been kind to the constant human striving for a sense of purpose in life. Two world wars, the Holocaust, the invention of nuclear weapons, and now the global environmental crisis have led many of us to wonder if survival -- much less enlightened, joyous, and hopeful living -- is possible. We r