Two Striper as Chiefs
by David H. Hackworth
11 January 2000
Last week, Al Gore said he'd require any appointee
to the U.S. armed
forces
Joint Chiefs of Staff to agree in advance to allow
homosexuals to serve
openly in our military.
When asked about Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell"
policy, here's how he
responded: "I would insist before appointing
anybody to the Joint Chiefs
of
Staff that the individual support my policy. And,
yes, I would make that a
requirement."
After enduring the next 48 hours of heavy incoming
fire, the vice
president
stumbled out of his bunker and told millions of
Americans they'd misheard.
He weasel-worded that he "did not mean to imply
that there should ever be
any kind of inquiry into the personal political
opinions of the officers."
Millions of Americans "misheard"? I don't think
so.
Clearly, Gore lied. But what's new? He lied about
his combat service in
Vietnam when he said he'd been there and done that
grunt stuff, lied about
plowing the back 40 on his daddy's tobacco farm
and now is lying about
what
our ears transmitted to our brains.
Sure, most politicians lie. But to lie so
blatantly about an issue so
critical to our security and then have the
chutzpah to say we got it wrong
is even more insulting than usual.
My take is that, like President Lyndon Johnson,
Gore has issues with the
brass. I reckon what we witnessed on television
was the real Gore caught
dead in the center of a subconscious slip. He's on
record when he was a
soldier in Vietnam for calling his officers
"fascists" and driving his
buddies nuts over how much he hated the Army.
Granted the Army drill must've been hard for a
Harvard graduate -- an
enlisted man who'd led a privileged life of
servants and private schools.
The son of a rich and powerful senator wouldn't
exactly be thrilled with
an
outfit that made him get up at o'dark hundred,
stand in line in the rain,
eat out of a mess kit and shout "How high, sir?"
when told to jump.
Things got better once Gore got to Vietnam. There
his basic weapon was a
Remington typewriter, and the headquarters' snack
bar was light-years away
from the trenches where the daily fighting and
dying occurred. He was
special: the only enlisted man in Vietnam with his
own bodyguard.
Gore's senator daddy also got his son's 12-month
tour cut to five by
leaning
on a political general. The unconnected, of
course, served a minimum of 12
months unless they went out Purple Heart early on
a stretcher or in a body
bag.
So it's easy to see why he wants generals and
admirals who'll
go-along-to-get-along, advisers to expedite his
political agenda and help
scoop up the homosexual vote -- while finishing
off our armed forces.
But it's critical that the service chiefs and the
chairman of the JC of S
be
their own men, not presidential lap dogs. They
must be selected because
they're the best in the armed forces to win wars,
not because they'll be
the
president's personal yes men.
The chiefs were just so politicized and
manipulated by LBJ during the
Vietnam War. And as a result of LBJ's anti-brass
paranoia, his lies to the
public and the service chiefs' dereliction of
duty, we lost our first war
and have a black monument in Washington D.C.
inscribed with the names of
58,000 sacrificial lambs.
There's already been too much compromise and not
enough standing tall by
the
chiefs and the rest of our brass hats. In the last
seven years, not one
serving senior officer has challenged the
Clinton-Gore agenda -- pushing
political correctness and committing our forces on
wrongheaded missions --
that's led to the near destruction of our
military.
If Gore becomes the prez, I bet not one serving
admiral and general will
sell his or her soul for a chief's job if it means
going along with Gore's
open-homosexuality-in-the-ranks scenario. There'll
be an avalanche of
resignations instead. And then a bunch of very
liberal
corporals will be brought in to take over the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Finally, the Clinton-Gore demolition job on the
armed forces will be
complete!
This was written by an Epsicopal Minister in Georgia
As I was making my daily journey to the Post Office the other day,
I patiently waited for a car to vacate a parking space near the
door. As the rear of the vehicle came toward me, I noticed a bumper
sticker which read, in big, bold letters, "THANK ME. I VOTED
CLINTON-GORE." Of course, the bumper sticker was printed in response to
an earlier sticker which adorned some automobiles some six years
Ago.
Back then, as Presidents Bill and Hillary were attempting to nationalize
health care and play havoc with the discipline and fiber of the military,
"Don't Blame Me. I Voted For Bush" was the message on many bumpers. Hence,
the "Thank Me.." message came in response.
Pondering the message of the brave, stubborn soul in the car ahead of
me, I considered all the things I could be thankful for as a result of
the Clinton-Gore regime. Indeed, I discovered the list was long and
varied. So, it is to that fellow, I offer a hearty "Thank you!"
Thank you for introducing us to Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica
Lewinski and about two dozen other names that we might not have met and
known otherwise.
Thank you for allowing a war hero and the author of one of the most
successful military campaigns in military history to leave the presidency
because, no matter how successful he was, we, in all our moral outrage,
just wouldn't tolerate someone who would lie to the American people by
promising "no new taxes" and then going back on his word We certainly
can't have a liar in the White House, now can we?
Thank you for showing all the men and women in America that sexual
harassment in the work place, and on the job, is okay as long as it
involves powerful middle- age executives and the young women half their
age under their power. It is, after all, a "private matter." Thank you
for revealing that the agenda of the National Organization for Women
only includes some women. Women like Anita Hill, and not women like
Paula Jones, Monica Lewinski, et. al.
Thank you for allowing us to come to the realization that "sexual
relations" is not clearly defined after all. And all these years, I
thought that "oral sex" really had something to do with sex!
(Imagine!) (Or is it Oral Sex when you talk about it ...?)
Thank you for giving us a president who discusses his choice of underwear
with teenagers. We always wondered if presidents wore boxers or briefs.
Thank you for installing a man who reminds us of those good old days
of potsmoking (without inhaling, of course) and war protesting.
Thank you for showing us that the ridiculous plot of the movie, "Wag
the Dog," could really be plausible after all.
Thank you for reintroducing the concept of "impeachment" to a new
generation that missed the discussion surrounding it the last time it
was brought up.
Thank you for curing me of my addiction to the evening news.
Thank you for reminding us that the government that gave us the Internal
Revenue Service and welfare, also lusts for control of the greatest health
care system in the world.
Thank you for reminding us that the FBI, who has a file on millions of
Americans, including myself, can give those files to people powerful
enough to demand them.
Thank you for reminding us that, when all is said and done, character
really, really does matter.
And, in comparison to recent days:
Thank you for making Dan Quayle look like the Rhodes Scholar.
Thank you for making Jimmy Carter look competent.
Thank you for making Gerald Ford look graceful.
Thank you for making Richard Nixon look honest.
Thank you for making Lyndon Johnson look truthful.
Thank you for making John Kennedy look moral.
Thank you for making Al Gore look positively presidential.
Thank you for reminding us of the importance of term limits. And really,
thank you not once, but twice!
Why, if not for you, instead of the current, interesting discussion all
over the television networks and newspapers, we would be focused on a
whole slew of trivial matters such as giving secrets to China in exchange
for campaign contributions, global defense, the economy, nukes in North Korea,
genocide in Africa & Kosovo, the containment of terrorism, and all those
other boring topics.
So, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Since Bill Clinton took office, here are some of the good things that have
Happened:
7 House and Senate witnesses have pled the Fifth Amendment.
17 witnesses have fled the country to avoid testifying.
19 foreign witnesses have refused to be interviewed by US investigative bodies.
19 charges from Whitewater investigations,
4 convictions from Whitewater investigations,
8 imprisonment's from Whitewater Investigations.
55 total charges in all Clinton scandals,
32 total convictions (so far) in all Clinton scandals,
14 total imprisonment's (so far) in all Clinton scandals.
938 overnight stays at the White House for Clinton supporters.
$48 million - cost of Starr's 2 Year investigation.
$49 million - cost of Clinton's 10 day trip to China.
Yes, it's been an interesting 6 years for "the most ethical administration
in the history of the Republic."
Record shows Gore long embellishing truth
By Walter V. Robinson and Michael Crowley, Globe Staff, 4/11/2000
Vice President Al Gore brings a remarkable life story to the presidential race: His father was
such an unwavering supporter of civil rights that it cost him his Senate seat. His older sister
was the first-ever volunteer in the Peace Corps, that heroic outpost on President Kennedy's New
Frontier.
By Gore's account: He was raised in hardscrabble Tennessee farm country. He was a brilliant
student, in high school and at Harvard. And despite his political pull, he received no special
treatment, opting instead to go to Vietnam where he was ''shot at.''
After his Army service, he spent seven years as a journalist, and his reporting at the Tennessean in
Nashville put corrupt officials in prison.
As a junior member in the US House, he was a major force: He wrote and then spearheaded
passage of the Superfund law. He even authored the US nuclear negotiating position. And at a time
when President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev faced off on the superpower stage,
Gore had his own meeting with Gorbachev.
And, of course, he created the Internet.
At various times in his political career, Gore, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has
said all those things about himself and his family.
None are quite true.
Some are exaggerations grown up around kernels of biographical fact. Others are simply false. A
few, like the boastful claim about the Internet, have become comic fodder, even for Gore.
The mystery, even for Gore's friends, is why he has persistently embroidered a political resume and
pedigree that shorn of embellishments are impressive by any measure. Gore did press for early
funding of the network that grew into the Internet. He served in Vietnam when he could have
arranged a safer setting, unlike his Republican rival, George W. Bush. His journalism did unearth
corruption. And in Congress, he exerted uncommon influence on technology and national security
matters, notwithstanding his lack of seniority.
But for Gore, the facts have never been quite enough. Starting as a junior congressman and
continuing through this year's primaries, Gore has regularly promoted himself, and skewered his
opponents, with embroidered, misleading, and occasionally false statements to a degree that even
some of his allies concede is rare for a politician of his stature.
Many of Gore's inflated claims have been reported, though only a few prominently. But a review by
the Globe of Gore's public statements over more than 20 years, as well as two recent biographies,
suggest that the pattern has been more pronounced than previously believed, and that it remains
unchecked.
Earlier fears that Gore would be hobbled by President Clinton's character failings have abated.
Now, it is Gore's credibility that could become an issue. Behind the scenes, according to sources,
top campaign aides have met to consider the issue's potential for damaging Gore's candidacy. His
Republican opponent, Texas Governor Bush, has already telegraphed his plans to attack Gore's
believability.
Gore's recent campaign rhetoric has invited scrutiny of his sometimes freewheeling treatment of
facts. Several times, he misstated his own record and that of his Democratic opponent, former
senator Bill Bradley. In Iowa, Gore's misleading claim that Bradley voted against disaster relief for
the flood-stricken state dealt a serious blow to Bradley's insurgent candidacy.
''Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don't tell the truth as a
candidate?'' Bradley asked Gore at a debate in New Hampshire.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of
Communications, said she is troubled that Gore sometimes continues to use exaggerated or
inaccurate claims even in the face of public evidence that he is wrong.
''You wonder if it's a failure to listen or an impulse to deceive,'' said Jamieson, who monitors the
accuracy of political statements. ''The question is, is there a basic personality flaw there that will
make it more difficult for him to be president? Is there a tendency to exaggerate? Is there a
tendency to reconstruct the past? When you start counting on the fingers of both hands you start to
say maybe there's a pattern here.''
Douglas Hattaway, a campaign spokesman, said Gore could not be interviewed on the issue.
''Everybody makes mistakes, and every politician's utterances are pounced upon. But it is not fair to
pull out every misstatement and honest mistake and attack him for it,'' Hattaway said.
Many political candidates portray themselves as more effective or courageous than the facts justify
and paint their opponents in the worst possible light.
For example, Bush has made claims about his gubernatorial record that are open to challenge. To
cite one case, Bush takes credit for a major HMO reform in Texas. In fact, he opposed the bill and
it became law without his signature. And during the New York primary, Bush's campaign ran an
advertisement that falsely characterized Senator John McCain's record on breast cancer research.
Bush narrowly won that election.
But even some of Gore's supporters glumly acknowledge that Gore stands out for the extent to
which he has created myths about his life and his record. As the Globe reported in January, the
issue so troubled his presidential campaign staff in 1988 that aides twice sent him memos warning
him about it.
More recent Gore claims make it clear that the predilection persists. In announcing his candidacy
last June, Gore praised his father's courage on civil rights but sidestepped an obvious contradiction:
The elder Gore strongly opposed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. And his sister was a salaried
midlevel political appointee at Peace Corps headquarters, and not, as Gore has said on a couple of
occasions, a ''volunteer,'' the label reserved for those who serve overseas.
Newsweek reporter Bill Turque, the author of a new biography, ''Inventing Al Gore,'' said Gore is
prone to ''self aggrandizement.'' Yet in most instances, Turque noted, the embellishments are not
made up out of whole cloth, but involve a ''nugget of fact'' that Gore has embroidered.
''The most bewildering thing is that, in most of the cases, the straight story is as praiseworthy as the
one he inflates,'' Turque said last week.
Turque and Bob Zelnick, a former ABC News reporter and the author of a 1999 Gore biography,
''Gore: A Political Life,'' both trace Gore's tendency to exaggerate his resume to the vice president's
childhood. They said the child of prominent parents could never quite measure up to their
unreasonable expectations.
In his parents' eyes, said Turque, ''it was not enough for him to be good, to be excellent. He had to
be transcendent, he had to save the world. This desire of his to please them left him with a
compulsion in the retelling to stretch what are honorable, credible accomplishments.''
Dukakis responds
In the 1988 presidential primary campaign, then-Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis,
needled once too often by Gore, upbraided him during a debate: ''Please get your facts straight. If
you want to be president of the United States, you better start by being accurate.'' Another
candidate, former Senator Paul Simon, scolded Gore during another debate for making ''sweeping
charges.''
In recent interviews, Simon and Dukakis were reluctant to discuss their scrapes with the man who
is now their party's standard bearer. But Simon said Gore's rhetorical excesses that year ''could
accurately be described as brashness, which obviously didn't get him anywhere. ... It was a
combination of youth and inexperience.''
But what raised the most eyebrows in 1988 was not what Gore said about his opponents. It was
his inclination, during his first audition on a national stage, to add lustrous detail to his own resume.
Many of the embellishments were unearthed at the time, but attracted little attention because Gore's
1988 campaign proved a hapless effort.
The aides in 1988 who warned Gore about sticking to the facts had plenty to worry about: Gore's
claim that he grew up in Carthage, Tenn., when he was reared in a Washington hotel suite; his
exaggeration of his farming background; his statements, later debunked, that he had been under fire
in Vietnam and that his investigative reporting at the Tennessean in Nashville in the 1970s had sent
people to jail; his claim to have been schooled in rural Tennessee and urban Washington, when he
was educated at an elite private school in the capital; and his insistence that he had been a
homebuilder and small businessman when he had minimal involvement in a small Tennessee
subdivision.
Last March, Gore reasserted his claim to have been a developer and small businessman. And,
starting in 1994, Gore has added two years to his journalistic experience, upping the figure from the
five years he once claimed to seven.
In one 1988 ad, Gore claimed to have been a ''brilliant student,'' but that has been contradicted by
Turque's biography. Gore's transcripts show that his high school and college grades were
predominantly B's and C's. The same campaign ad also said Gore ''refused any special treatment''
when he joined the Army for two years and went to Vietnam, where he spent five months. Yet
Turque discovered evidence that General William C. Westmoreland played some role in Gore's
enlistment. And when Gore arrived in Vietnam, Turque reports, his commanding officer issued
instructions that Gore be kept away from danger.
Hattaway, Gore's spokesman, said that if there was any preferential treatment, Gore was unaware
of it. ''The fact is,'' Hattaway said, ''everyone in Vietnam was in danger. And Al Gore served in
Vietnam, when a lot of people were doing their best to avoid it altogether.''
In his campaigns in 1984 and 1988, Gore awarded himself credit for national policy
accomplishments that a junior member of the House or Senate could only dream of.
For example, Gore immersed himself in the nuclear arms debate, becoming one of a number of
House moderates whose support was coveted by the Reagan administration. The Democrats, led
by Representative Les Aspin and Senator Sam Nunn, and backed by Gore, wanted a less
destabilizing option than the multiple-warhead MX missile. Their plan, ultimately shelved by the
White House, called for the single-warhead Midgetman missile.
Yet when Gore ran for the Senate in 1984, one TV ad proclaimed, ''He wrote the bipartisan plan
on arms control that US negotiators will take to the Russians.''
''That is a vast overstatement. He had nothing to do with what we proposed to the Soviets,''
Kenneth Adelman, who was the director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said
in an interview. Adelman's view is supported by the two biographies, and by contemporaneous
news accounts.
When he ran for president four years later, Gore aired television ads showing him shaking hands
with Gorbachev. And he told audiences that he had met with the Soviet leader. But Gore's only
''meeting'' with Gorbachev took place when the two men shook hands during a luncheon
Gorbachev had with 26 members of Congress.
And further seeking to highlight his national security credentials in that race, Gore visited the naval
base in Norfolk, Va. in February 1988 to chastise his Democratic primary opponents for opposing
funds to build new aircraft carriers. As for himself, Gore said, ''I would stand for a strong America.''
Gore neglected to mention that he had voted in the Senate against the funding for carriers.
In two other campaign ads in 1988, Gore awarded himself credit for the landmark 1980 Superfund
legislation, saying he ''led the fight to clean up toxic waste'' and was the ''author of a tough
Superfund law to protect the environment and crack down on toxic polluters.'' But someone else
was the author. Gore played only a supporting role as one of 42 House co-sponsors.
Tobacco is another issue where Gore's statements have been open to question. Despite his
assertions, repeated this year, that he worked for tougher restrictions against tobacco, Gore was a
reliable vote for tobacco interests while he was in the House.
But it was an emotional speech at the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that
biographers like Turque and Zelnick find even more troubling. In it, Gore recounted his sister's
death from lung cancer, caused by cigarettes she began smoking at age 13.
''Tomorrow morning, another 13-year-old girl will start smoking. I love her, too,'' Gore declared,
bringing tears to the eyes of many listeners. ''Three thousand young people in America will start
smoking tomorrow. One thousand of them will die a death not unlike my sister's. And that is why
until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children
from the dangers of smoking.''
A day later, Gore was accused of hypocritically exploiting his sister's death for political gain. The
reason: For seven years after his sister died, Gore remained an ally of big tobacco and accepted
both tobacco campaign contributions and federal subsidies for the tobacco grown on his farm.
Even in the face of lingering questions about his tendency to embellish, the vice president
nevertheless misstated his own record and distorted Bradley's at several critical junctures in the last
six months.
Jamieson, the University of Pennsylvania scholar, said this year's most egregious example of Gore's
willingness to stretch the truth was his continued repetition of the charge that Bradley had opposed
flood relief for midwestern farmers in 1993.
During a Jan. 9 debate in Des Moines, Gore chastised Bradley for opposing flood aid. The attack
had been choreographed in advance: Gore asked a local farmer hurt by the floods to stand for
dramatic effect.
Soon after, Gore unveiled television advertisements in which Iowa Senator Tom Harkin touted
Gore as ''the only Democratic candidate for president who helped make sure that Iowa got the help
we desperately needed after those floods.''
Caught off guard in debate, Bradley failed to respond. But Gore was widely criticized when details
of the flood votes emerged, showing that Bradley had voted for $4.8 billion in Midwest flood relief
and opposed only an amendment to add $900 million more. Even the White House opposed the
amendment until the last moment.
Under criticism, the Gore campaign briefly stopped running the ad. But on the weekend before
Iowa's caucus, it reappeared on Iowa airwaves. Bradley was badly drubbed in Iowa, sending him
into a tailspin from which he never recovered.
Biographer Zelnick, who now teaches at Boston University, called the disaster relief accusation a
''premeditated falsehood.'' That incident, Zelnick said in an interview, ''was far different from
speaking off the cuff and having an irresistible impulse to embellish. The farmer was a total plant,
and the assertion misrepresented Bill Bradley's position. It is and should be a subject of concern for
voters.''
Family members get praise
But it is not just his own life story and record that Gore has selectively rewritten.
Since his father died 16 months ago, the vice president has described the elder Gore in several
speeches, including one last April before an NAACP audience, as an early champion for civil rights
during his three Senate terms from 1953 to 1971.
''Halfway through this century,'' Gore said, in declaring his candidacy last June, ''when my father
saw that thousands of his fellow Tennesseans were forced to obey Jim Crow laws, he knew
America could do better. He saw a horizon in which his black and white constituents shared the
same hopes in the same world.''
It was a moving tribute, but with a notable omission: The elder Gore voted against the landmark
civil rights legislation of his time, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which repudiated the Jim Crow laws.
To be sure, Albert Gore Sr. stood out among Southern Democrats in the Senate. He refused to
support the Southern Manifesto in the 1950s, supported the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and voted
against two Supreme Court nominees who opposed civil rights.
`Those brave stands probably cost him his career,'' Gore told the NAACP audience in Detroit last
April 25.
But historians and the elder Gore have attributed his 1970 defeat mostly to his opposition to the
Vietnam War. Before other audiences, Gore has cited the war as the issue that cost his father his
Senate seat.
And, during his lifetime, the elder Gore made no claims to match his son's recent recollections. Late
in his life, he said he regretted his vote against the 1964 measure. In his memoirs, he said he was
''no white knight'' on civil rights.
Hattaway played down the contrast between Gore's claims and his father's record, noting that many
civil rights leaders have praised Gore's father's record.
Nancy Gore Hunger, who was 10 years older than her brother, worked as a paid staff aide at
Peace Corps headquarters from early 1961, when the agency was founded, until 1964, according
to Peace Corps records and several friends.
Yet Gore, in a 1992 appearance on C-SPAN, called his sister ''the very first volunteer for the
Peace Corps.'' In 1994, when the University of Tennessee at Knoxville established a chair in her
name, Gore said: ''She was the very first volunteer in the Peace Corps. She did so much for so
many.''
In 1996, when Gore addressed a meeting of Peace Corps officials, for whom the ''volunteer'' label
has special meaning, he did not describe her as a volunteer.
Coates Redmon, author of a book about the Peace Corps and a Peace Corps colleague of Nancy
Gore Hunger's, said the agency's first volunteers have always been afforded special status.
For the vice president to describe his sister that way, Redmon said, ''amounts to stretching the
truth.''
From inventing the Internet to inspiring the film Love Story, Al Gore’s penchant for exaggeration is well known. Today, he may have stretched the facts again.
In a speech honoring his mother at the Nashville City Club in Tennessee, the vice president told an anecdote about how Pauline LaFon Gore was invited for
lunch at the club in 1971, only to be summarily kicked out of the main dining room due to the club’s all-male policy.
Gore went on to recount how his mother’s ouster drew local outrage and she was a key instigator in the club’s changing its rules toward women: "The resulting
outrage, especially among young professional women here in Nashville, caused a revolution -- a minor one, albeit -- but a major change in the life of this club and
a few days later, this city club was opened to women and the charter was changed."
It was a speech by a doting son honoring his mother, who was also being awarded a bachelor of arts degree 67 years after she attended, but never completed,
university classes. And Mrs. Gore was indeed ahead of her time, as one of the first 10 women to earn a law degree from Nashville’s Vanderbilt University in 1936.
Revolution? But what the vice president didn’t mention was that the minor "revolution" his mother sparked at the Nashville City Club did not open the club’s membership to
women, as his comments implied -- only its dining rooms -- and even that didn’t happen until weeks after Mrs. Gore’s visit, not a mere "few days later," as Gore
claimed. The Nashville City Club did not go on to admit women as members until September 1985, 14 years after Mrs. Gore’s visit.
Until then, women were still barred from the men’s dining area unless accompanied by a member, according to local newspaper reports at the time. Club
members, however, maintain that the change in dining policy occurred shortly after Mrs. Gore’s visit.
Gore, known for some well-documented cases of exaggeration -- such as claiming a crucial role in the invention of the Internet and saying he served as the
inspiration for the film "Love Story," along with his wife, Tipper -- may have simply gotten carried away in the midst of a heartfelt tribute to his mother. But his
tendency to stretch the truth, whether intentional or not, was on full display again today.
What is accurate is that Mrs. Gore’s visit to the Nashville City Club for lunch served as the impetus for one member to rethink the club’s male-only dining room.
George Barrett is the Nashville lawyer who invited the vice president’s mother and two federal judges to lunch that afternoon 29 years ago. Barrett worked with
Mrs. Gore and her husband, former Sen. Albert Gore Sr. When he arrived with his lunchtime guests, the group was turned away from the men’s dining area and
relegated to the special "ladies dining room" in the rear.
Barrett, a founding member of the business club, told ABCNEWS the incident left Mrs. Gore a bit upset. The visit left him questioning the second-class
treatment of such a prominent member of local and national society.
‘I Do Remember Being Shocked’
"I do remember being shocked that the wife of a former U.S. senator and a lawyer in her own right couldn’t eat lunch there. It was silly," Barrett said.
The incident led Barrett to circulate a petition at the next annual meeting, where he successfully convinced members to change the bylaws to allow women to eat
where they chose. He had led a similar campaign to allow African-Americans to eat at the club and credits Mrs. Gore’s visit with inspiring his efforts for women.
"It was her visit that really activated me," said Barrett. "I never really focused on it before."
The club went on to take three votes on full membership for women, but did not admit them until 1985. Earlier this year, the Nashville City Club elected its first
female board president.
The Gore campaign maintained that the vice president’s statements about his mother’s visit were not in any way misleading. "I don’t see a huge discrepancy
there," spokesman Doug Hattaway told ABCNEWS.
Regardless of Gore’s intentions, his campaign has once again found itself in the awkward position of trying to explain away their boss’s latest exaggeration.
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