Summary
Vice President Al Gore played a major foreign policy role during the first term of the Clinton administration. This is part of the trend of vice presidents playing more significant roles in foreign policy issues since the second world war. His views on foreign policy issues were marked by independence and moderation and were distinct from the views of his fellow Democrats. He has made speeches at home and abroad on foreign policy issues and served as former President Jimmy Carter's liaison with the White House during the former president's sojourns into North Korea and Haiti.
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The foreign policy role of Vice President Al Gore.
There has been a post-World War II trend in the vice presidency whereby the second-office holder has an increasingly substantive role in White House foreign policy. The origins of this trend are not completely known.(1) Marie D. Natoli explains that a major contributor was Harry S. Truman who, as president, took steps, both statutory and informal, to get the vice president more closely involved in foreign policy. Truman learned this lesson as vice president as a result of being kept uninformed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on events as critical as the development of the atomic bomb and FDR's discussions with Churchill and Stalin. He met only eight times with FDR during his short tenure as vice president. "Truman's first days and months were spent . . . learning to be president," writes Natoli. "In this respect, Franklin Roosevelt . . . had done his vice president and the nation a great disservice."(2) As a result, President Truman vowed no vice president would ever again be so ill-prepared in foreign policy. He earned congressional approval of a bill including the vice president as a statutory member of the National Security Council. As a result of Truman's experiences and efforts, the vice president also now sits with the president's cabinet. Truman also began a critical practice that has continued throughout the contemporary vice presidency the president keeping the vice president fully briefed on a daily basis.(3)
Evidence suggests that other vice presidents key to the continuing trend toward greater foreign-policy involvement have been Richard Nixon, Walter Mondale, George Bush, and Dan Quayle--and now Vice President Al Gore. Like his three immediate predecessors, Vice President Gore has traveled abroad to engage in substantive meetings with foreign officials, often involving bargaining for the executive branch or announcing key policy objectives. Indeed, Gore has continued a fortunate trend whereby modern vice presidents' foreign-policy roles are no longer confined simply to what might have been called wreath-laying missions at funerals of foreign dignitaries. Many assessments of Gore have been hyperbolic. "Gore is playing a more important role in this administration than any previous vice president has played," said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "It's really quite extraordinary".(4) Mann's remarks came barely a year into the start of the Clinton administration--just as Gore was receiving most of his duties, particularly in foreign policy. Richard L. Berke of The New York Times agreed that in just one year, Gore had given the Office of Vice President its most consequential place in history.(5) Carter Eskew, who was Gore's media adviser during his 1988 presidential run, asserted, "If you have one defining event in your entire vice presidency, you're lucky.... But Al has had this series of huge successes."(6) Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher called Gore "the most influential vice president in history."(7) President Bill Clinton himself has stated, "I believe with all my heart that Al Gore will go down in American history as the most influential and productive vice president in our country's history."(8) Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia adds, "Compared with other vice presidents, he's dearly in a different league. In the public's eye, he may turn out to be the most active and most substantive vice president ever."(9) While many such assessments are exaggerated, Sabato makes an important distinction by noting that Gore is especially active "in the public's eye." Indeed, Gore has not received the negative publicity that hounded his predecessor, except from conservative sources. Nonetheless, despite numerous stretches about Vice President Gore's role being unprecedented in the history of the American vice presidency, there is no doubt that it has been substantial--including his involvement in the nation's foreign policy. In the realm of international affairs, Gore has continued the post-World War II trend toward greater vice-presidential involvement. In this sense, Paul Light is not far from the mark in asserting that Gore has succeeded in "extending the model tha...See the full content of this document
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