The Al Gore fans over at Vanity Fair have published an excerpt from the soon to be released, For Love of Politics—Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years, by Sally Bedell Smith.
The author maintains that First Lady Hillary Clinton was Vice President Gore's rival for power in the White House. And the competition worsened considerably when Hillary decided to run for the Senate while Al campaigned for the presidency.
It's a painful read.
Vanity Fair - White House Civil War:
Gore was the one most affected by Bill's reliance on his wife. It was a given in the White House, as Chief of Staff Mack McLarty said, that everyone would "just have to get used to" the fact that Hillary, along with Bill and Gore, had to "sign off on big decisions." But having what Clinton domestic-policy adviser Bruce Reed called "three forces to be reckoned with" added yet another layer of perplexity and rivalry to the West Wing, where advisers and Cabinet officers knew they could lobby either the First Lady or the vice president to reverse decisions by the president. David Gergen, counselor to the president in 1993 and 1994, called the "three-headed system" a "rolling disaster." . . .
Hillary also continued to compete with Gore for campaign funds. . . Not only was Hillary unavailable as a campaigner, she was poaching top Democratic fund-raisers and donors who would normally concentrate on the vice president. She had already enlisted Syracuse native Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Party's biggest rainmaker, who in the months to come cast a nationwide fund-raising net for her.
And back to the early Clinton/Gore years:
Most obviously, Gore had an ironic sensibility and appreciation for the absurd that both Bill and Hillary lacked. Asked how his routine had changed when he was forced to use crutches after injuring his Achilles tendon, he deadpanned, "It takes me twice as long to walk Socks," the Clintons' cat.
Al Gore President Politics Hillary Clinton 2000 News Bill Clinton Draft Gore Democrats 2008
