Albert Arnold “Al” Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, teacher, businessman, and environmentalist. From 1993 to 2001 he was the 45th Vice President of the United States under the Clinton administration.

Previously, Gore had served in the United States House of Representatives (1977–85) and the United States Senate (1985–93) representing Tennessee. He was the Democratic nominee for President in the 2000 election — one of the most controversial and highly contested presidential elections in U.S. history. Despite the fact that Gore won a plurality of the popular vote, with over half a million more votes than the Republican candidate George W. Bush, a month of ballot recounts and court challenges in the state of Florida led the Supreme Court to end the highly disputed contest with its final ruling of Bush v. Gore, handing the electoral college victory, and consequently the presidency, to Bush.[1]

Today, Gore is president of the American television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., and an unofficial adviser to Google’s senior management. He lectures widely on the topic of global warming, which he calls “the climate crisis.”[2] In 2006 he starred in the Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, discussing global warming and the environment.[3] Gore has a contract to write a new book, The Assault on Reason, to be published May 22, 2007. While he has stated that he has no intention of running for President again, it is frequently speculated that he is a potential candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

1. George W. Bush, et al., Petitioners v. Albert Gore, Jr., et al., 531 U.S. 98 (2000).
2. The Resurrection of Al Gore. Wired Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-02-24.
3. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/gore-wins-hollywood-in-a-landslide/