Interview with Senator Albert Gore Sr. and Pauline Gore

But she took it fine, she was great during the campaign, of course she was in school. Now her father is on the board of overseers, so he gets to Harvard a lot, and she gets to see him. He's there a short time, and she gets to have dinner with him, I think, but that helps. Well, eighteen are coming to the inauguration with her. I don't think it was just local people. I don't know it was. I don't think she's that interested in that. She had a boyfriend this summer, and he didn't come here. Somehow, I don't know. And I haven't heard anything of him since she went back to school in September. I think he's still there, but I don't think she's that interested yet in anybody. Well, that's a

good question. Having your son become the vice president of the United States is, of course, a great honor. But it has made an impact on your lives, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about how having a celebrity in the family has impacted on your activities here in Carthage. Mrs. Glorifax, you can answer that. Well, we get more telephone calls, and we get more visitors. But it's very nice. It's nice to have him achieve this honor, and we are proud of it and enjoying it. Senator Gore, you, of course, were a very significant senator from the state of Tennessee for a long time. And I can recall that at one point in your career, you were very close to becoming the president or the vice president of the United States. How do you feel to have your son in that position today? I'm not sure I can

adequately describe it. It's enormous joy and thrill that my son has achieved this level of public service. I think there's another step I'd like to see him take some day. Maybe I can live to see it. There are people today, and we frequently interview Senator Annabelle O 'Brien, Clement O 'Brien, who, of course, came from a political family. She said that politics is not a dirty word. Today, a lot of people think that if you're in the political arena that there is something wrong with it. How do you feel about public service and being in elective office? Well, that's a position of trust and honor and responsibility. That's how I feel. I tried to honor

all three of those conditions. In your political career, you did a lot of significant things. One of the things I guess that I did not know that you were responsible for, but read recently in the Tennessean, was the interstate highway system. I probably wouldn't be here or have college education because my father worked in construction and built a lot of the interstates in New England. How did you come up with the idea for this legislation? But how do you feel today when you're driving down the highways and know that you significantly contributed to that? Well, first I'd to relate how I came up with the idea. I was in World War II for a few months and went with the infantry on the attack in Germany. I saw what the German highway system, the Autobahn, meant militarily for us. It did, of course, even more for

the Germans. Later on, after I was chairman of the Highway Committee back in the Congress, back in the Senate, Dwight Eisenhower, who was then general, not president, and I jointly addressed a convention in Washington. Then we walked across a park, no, I guess 300 yards and had a little talk as we went. He and I, in that walk, discussed the German Autobahns. He expressed to you that the facility of this national system of highways in Germany made it possible for Hitler, for a long time, to support a war on both sides.

We agreed as we talked that our country needed it, not only for national defense, but for the growing economy, the need for rapid transportation. Anyway, later on he recommended it and I introduced a bill and worked at it and revised the bill to meet the public needs and the requisites of the legislation. Finally, I passed into law and now to answer your second question. I just don't know what we would now do, how it would affect. It would be disastrous to our economy if the interstate system was suddenly not there. And we were on the narrow roads with a lot of traffic lights. The largest fight I had was in limitation of access. I had to be sold on it myself.

But I came to realize that you could not have a safe system of rapid transit highways and leave it open for every landowner to sell a spot, to a garage, to a hamburger joint, to a real estate office or whatever, and back in and drive out on the highway anyplace. So we finally got the law passed so that access would only be by these circle entrances and exits. So the system is free of traffic lights. You can drive from New York to Los Angeles and never be stopped by traffic lights. And you can go on it and off of it only by the club reliefs. This was the hardest fight. The landowners, the business people wanted

to have free access. The second hardest fight was to make the right -of -way wide enough to keep it so it could be beautified and then keep prevent billboards from being placed at every curve to block the views of the landscape. This was a hard one. Anyway, we passed the law. We've got millions of miles built, but there still needs to be some more. And it's every mile that's paid for before you drive on it. What are some of the things that you hope that your son and President Clinton can do while in office?

There are a lot of problems in this country today. And a lot of people think that they are going to immediately solve them, and that probably will be difficult to do. Well, it takes time to solve any problem, and we have some great ones. I'd say health care right now is the greatest, most pressing. And we're plagued with, I think, the worst plague that's hit humanity since the bubonic plague. The danger of AIDS is enormous, enormous. We have no care for it, and it is more devastating to people in the lower brackets of income. I don't know why.

Probably partially because of the misunderstanding of how it's acquired. That's one reason, I think. But there are so many problems that share the importance of solving the health care and the age, the drugs, jobs. They've got so much to start doing all at the same time. we got into this situation over a period of time, and it's going to take a period of time to get out of it. You've been in the political arena all these years as a wife and now as a mother. How do you feel about it? Is it your life also? I know that you're in a public spotlight a lot of the time. Is that something that you give up your privacy sometimes? Well, we don't give up very much privacy. Some of it comes in spurts, but not very much.

I feel proud that he has the opportunity as well as the responsibility to try to help get us out of this and solve the problems that we need solving. And what small amount of privacy we might give up is certainly worth the opportunities that come to him. Do you think it's harder to be a public servant today than it was when Senator Gorsh senior served? Well, not any harder than it is anything else in life. Life is more difficult now. It takes you longer to shop. It takes you longer to do many things, but then we have more opportunities and more pleasures too than we did when we had less access to the things that we can

have now. Do you, on a later vein, how do you feel when comedians like Jay Leno or some of the comedians, I don't know if you watch them on television, we know that Albert Gorsh junior is an environmentalist, I think Jay Leno told a story about him on Thanksgiving Day telling the turkey to run because, you know, Albert Gorsh was saying run, turkey run, you know, because he didn't want to see the turkey be Thanksgiving dinner. How do you feel in that vein? I didn't hear that and we don't listen to the late night shows and many of the comedians. It doesn't bother me. I would hope that jokes made of environmental problems would cause more people to think about them instead of disregard the problems that we face. Do you think having a home here in Carthage had an influence on his love for the environment? Oh, yes. Coming up on

a farm had a tremendous effect on him. know, to live in an environment where you try to solve the problems on a farm, you try to stop the washing gullies of the farm and you know the problems of pesticides and herbicides. Yes, I think it had a big effect on him. He grew up in the period of Rachel Carson and knowing, you know, a lot of people have not known we faced a problem and many of the things that have been done up to now have been done because they didn't know it. I just picked up the Wall Street Journal, came in the mail this morning, and there's a page one story that in the southern part of Chile, the state of Pentagon, the principal industry has been

sheep, raising sheep, wool. The sheep are going blind, hole in the ozone. I read a story just a few days ago that in parts of Australia, the children can only go out in the daytime if they have heavy, dark, where heavy, dark glasses, the environmental threat to mankind and to this earth is growing, it's dangerous. Twenty -three years ago when I wrote my last book, I had a whole chapter on energy, conservation and the environment. So I was thinking of it then and

Al read my book and commented on it and so the subject is not new to him. As Pauline said, he came up with practice and conservation here on the farm. He came up with our awareness of the environmental problems and now he's become a world authority on the subject. He has written the book as you know on environment. Now my book sold, well I believe it got up to twenty thousand and I was real, real pleased with that. Well, the sale of Al's book now in our own country is approaching three hundred thousand copies and it's now printed in eight different languages. It's on the best seller list in Germany for instance. So here is a young man who's lived and learned and prospered in public service and in learning and we're just

so happy that he has this opportunity to help lead our country. I think one of the nicest things there is now the young people, the school children, think the schools have done a marvelous job of calling attention to the environmental problems and the young people are the ones who coming on will have to solve it and they're really on to it. And I know many parents who are embarrassed to do things around their children. They don't want them to see them because they're not in compliance with what they think or good environmental practices. We can look forward to that. Now education, you were talking about education and there are areas that teachers are now becoming more responsible for like teaching environment, teaching family values and that sort of thing. What kind of family values did you have when Senator Gore was growing up that makes him

achieve the vice presidency of the United States? Well, when he was growing up I didn't think about what we were doing as family values. I just used the, you know, I practiced love in the home for the children and responsibility of what I thought of as responsibilities to my children and their responsibilities to us and their neighbors and just to humanity. I can do better about what she did than she'll do for herself, I think. She was a loving mother. She was a kind mother. She was also strict. She required her children to do their homework for school. She required them to practice habits of cleanliness, of honor and of respect for every human being.

That's what is called, I guess, now family values. Well, by whom? Some people have a bigoted notion of family values. One reason that Pauline and I together campaigned in many states all across the United States was to drive home the fact that we practiced family values of the true kind, not the bigoted kind of some one's particular notion of religion or ethics or politics, but the American way. And she lived it and helped her children live it. And you're both native Tennesseans and you, even when you were serving as a senator, lived here or came here quite frequently because a lot of times it said, well, Albert Gordon Jr. really isn't a Tennessean. He didn't really spend that much time in Tennessee. But he really is in a way. You're Tennessean's bread and bone, right?

Oh, yeah. Well, you couldn't get anybody around this area to say he didn't grow up here. He was here all the summers and vacations, holidays. Of course, when we were in Washington, he went to school dire. But as soon as school was out, he wanted to come home immediately. Immediately. Why? Well, he had playmates here. He had a pony. He had a dog who had frequent litter of puppies. He had fishing rods and a lake here in front of the house to fish and swim in. Where do you think a boy, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, would prefer to live under conditions here, as I've just described, are on the eighth floor of a brick building with concrete all around it?

So he came home to Tennessee and now he brings his family home. Yes, he does. Yes, indeed. indeed. In fact, on Christmas Day, we were talking about this very question. I said, well, son, your responsibilities are going to be so great. It's nationwide and worldwide. I don't know how you're going to be in Tennessee very much. He said, well, I plan to spend some time with the children down there during the summers. So he's still yearning to be here during the summer. We canoes and a motorboat. All of his children water ski. He water skis and Tipper does. In fact, our oldest daughter, Karen, was state

women's champion of water skiing. So, yes, they'll be here. I've heard class. Well, I have to keep him straight. Well, she won the female class. Of course, she didn't ski like I would if I could. I don't know how to ski. Now, I understand that, of course, you're going to be there for the inauguration. What are you going to think about when we see him inaugurated as vice president? Think about what he's going to start doing. When he takes that oath, then the responsibility is his. And he will do his best to fulfill it. You've met a lot of great people in your life. You mentioned Eisenhower. see a picture with Lyndon Johnson. I'm sure you knew all, other presidents in between 1938 and today. Could you

tell us what you think might be the greatest fan that you've Well, I'd say Franklin D. Roosevelt. Do you hope that Albert Gore Jr. will sometimes personify some Franklin D. Roosevelt's race? Well, I think he already does. And I hope he'll manifest more. Any final comment? No, we just have a feeling of pride and hope. And I guess that sums up. We're proud that he's achieved this honor and privilege. And then we have great hope that things will go well enough that they can realize the things that they want to do for the people and for people in the country. Anything you'd like to add?

Thank you. Okay. Did I do okay? Yes.