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Al Gore-leone
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Feb. 23, 2000 | "I worked my whole life -- I don't apologize -- to take care of my family," the father says. "And I refused to be a fool dancing on the string held by all those big shots. I don't apologize, that's my life. But I thought that when it was your time that you would be the one to hold the strings. 'Senator Corleone.' 'Governor Corleone.' Something." How about "Vice President Corleone"?
In the early 1970s, "The Godfather," by Mario Puzo, became a runaway bestseller, and the film versions -- "The Godfather" and its sequel, "The Godfather, Part II," co-written by Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola -- instant classics. No less mesmerized by the saga was a young man in Tennessee who lauded the saga of the Corleones, calling it "the true American story." He would grow up to become Vice President Al Gore. That young Gore was so fond of Puzo's novel -- as first revealed in "Inventing Al Gore: A Biography" by Newsweek's Bill Turque, should surprise no one. Turque describes how Gore buddy Andy Schlesinger couldn't help but think that "the saga of a son having to take over the family business had struck an intimate chord with Gore." That "intimate chord" is more like a Puccini aria. For "The Godfather" -- both novel and the first two films -- is the Sicilian gangster biopic of the vice president in a number of eerily similar ways. Both the story of Michael Corleone and that of Al Gore star an Ivy-educated noble son (Dartmouth for Corleone, Harvard for Gore), fresh home from a war (World War II for Marine Corleone, Vietnam for Army vet Gore) -- a war in which he had enlisted, surprising both friends and family. Upon his return, the son is thrust reluctantly into the family business after a well-backed rival essentially takes his father out of commission. For Corleone it was Virgil Sollozzo, supported by the Tattaglia and Barzini families. For Gore it was Rep. Bill Brock of Tennessee, backed by the Republican National Committee and the Nixon White House. Though observers wonder if the son is up for the task, in both cases he inevitably proves to be a more effective -- and ruthless -- leader than the old man whom he follows into the family business, and whose failures he vows never to repeat. The films "The Godfather" and "The Godfather, Part II" (we won't trouble ourselves with the dismal third picture) provide plenty of grist to show that the rough-and-tumble worlds of gangsters and politicians aren't so different. A Nevada senator comes to Michael Corleone to try to shake him down, for instance. Corleone tells him that "we're part of the same hypocrisy." At another point, Corleone insists to his girlfriend, Kay Adams, "My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator." "Do you know how naive you sound, Michael?" she retorts. "Presidents and senators don't have men killed!" "Who's being naive, Kay?" Corleone says, and his question hangs in the air like a noose. But if politics and La Cosa Nostra bear striking similarities, so too do Gore and Corleone. Their travels and struggles are remarkably similar. Forget "Love Story" -- "The Godfather" must have been secretly based on our vice president's life. At the beginnings of their stories were the fathers. "It's not easy to be a son, Fredo," Michael Corleone tells his brother. Indeed. Especially if your father is Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore, a powerful, stately, strict man. Both Albert Gore and Vito Corleone were self-made men who rose up from poverty. Downfalls came for both men when they struggled to change with the times. For Vito Corleone, it was an adherence to the values of the Old Country -- and a refusal to recognize that the future of the Mafia was narcotics. For Albert Gore Sr., it was an inability to reconcile his Washington liberalism with the rising Republicanism of the South. What's so amazing about the Machiavellian transformations of both sons is that each began their adult lives insisting that they wanted no part of their father's world. And each did so with a touching naivete. "That's my family, Kay," Corleone tells his young bride. "It's not me." Seconded Gore, "I didn't want anything to do with it," he says repeatedly on the stump. "Politics was the last thing I thought I would ever do." But Don Vito Corleone was shot, and Sen. Albert Gore faced the reelection fight of his life, and both sons were on hand to help out. Corleone hung around the house, making a few phone calls when asked; Gore put on his Army uniform and campaigned for his father. To no avail. Corleone's health would never return and he soon resigned as Don. Gore Sr. lost to Brock in 1970. Still convinced of their purity, both Corleone and Gore devoted themselves to the ephemeral task of bringing down corrupt public officials. Gore, a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean, worked with prosecutors on a case that inspired the prosecution of Morris Haddox, a prominent city councilman who was on the take. Corleone killed a crooked policeman, Capt. McCluskey, who was being paid by Sollozzo. And then, before plunging into their father's chaotic worlds, both Corleone and Gore had moments of bucolic bliss -- Corleone in Sicily, where he fled after killing McCluskey and Sollozzo; Gore in Tennessee, where he listened to the Grateful Dead, got baked, had fun. "I loved that time," Gore once said to the Washington Post. "The freedom ..." Dragged back in the reality of the Big City, however, the sons took to the family business like fish to water. In 1976, Gore won a multichallenger race by working his butt off, shaking hands, kissing babies, doing what he needed to do. Corleone, too. And once there, it all seemed so natural. Like Corleone, Gore seems to have made his peace long ago with the ugly world of politics. "I'm really comfortable with the trade-offs involved," Gore once said. "I have no complaints with this job, I really don't ..."
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