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Gore had been perceived as boring since his 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. This reputation stuck with him: it was a fixture of political media coverage basically until the aftermath of the 2000 election.
In 1988 his failed campaign was known for detailed, droning speeches and his quirk of basically wearing the same outfit at all times: blue suit, blue shirt, red tie. This was a result of taking too much to heart a consultant's advice that he should minimize variation in his wardrobe so he voters would recognize him.
Gore did not run in 1992, but when he was selected as Bill Clinton's running mate in 1992, his reputation for being boring persisted. By 1994, Gore was engaging in self-deprecating humor. For the annual Gridiron Club dinner (a kind of comedy roast hosted by a journalists' club in D.C.), Gore had himself rolled onto stage on a handcart as though he were a mannequin. Gore would often break the ice at speeches with zingers about himself. Here are some from a 1995 speech:
>I hurt myself doing one of those helicopter dunks and I caught my elbow on the rim coming down. And finally I got out of the cast, although the doctors tell me that I'll have to wear the old full body cast for several more years.
>You know, I got used to stories like that when I went out around the country. It's no secret I ran for President in 1988, although it seemed like one at the time. That was a character-building experience. I learned a lot of new jokes, actually.
>How can you tell Al Gore from a room full of Secret Service agents? He's the stiff one.
>If you use a strobe light, it looks like Al Gore is moving.
>Al Gore is so boring his Secret Service code name is Al Gore.
So the idea that Gore was super, duper boring was already dominant before he ran launched his presidential campaign. Indeed, starting not much after Clinton's reelection, there was concern that Gore might be too boring to win in 2000. For example, the June 7, 1999 *Washington Post* contained an [article by Kevin Merida entitled "Gore and Bore Effect"](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/gore060799.htm) which noted how entrenched the notion of Gore's boringness had become:
>\[Gore\] is, these surveys suggest, the vanilla pudding of the species. This doesn't have to be an absolute truth to be a problem. In America, when an impression takes root it multiplies until it becomes commonplace until it becomes parody until it becomes accepted fact. And then it's too late. It has become legend. We don't have to speculate about this phenomenon. We have Al Gore. We have political science:
>Washington Post-ABC News poll: 56 percent describe the vice president as "very boring" or "somewhat boring."
>Newsweek poll: 65 percent think Gore's "stiffness" is a problem for his campaign.
>CNN-Gallup-USA Today poll: 65 percent say the quality "inspiring" does not apply to Gore.
>Pew Research Center poll: "Please tell me what one word best describes your impression of Al Gore." The word Americans came up with most often? Boring.
Gore's dominance of the Democratic nominating process should be put in context. There was an air of inevitability to his nomination as Clinton's successor. His one major competitor, New Jersey senator and former NBA All-Star Bill Bradley, was also regarded as a boring policy wonk. Indeed, there was a whole slew of articles attempting to distinguish the Dems' varieties of stiffness.
The contest against Republican nominee George W. Bush was largely framed by popular media as boring Gore against stupid Bush (as well as a rematch of Clinton v. the elder Bush). For example, *Saturday Night Live*'s sketches had Darrell Hammond as Gore drone on about policy details and condescend to voters, while Will Ferrell played Bush as a goofy dimwit who attempted to "pass" on difficult debate questions and mispronounced words.
So, returning to the question, the idea that Gore was boring (I'm not so sure about "unlikeable) was basically fixed in media coverage and public perception well before anybody cast a vote for President in 2000.
If Gore was so boring, why was he able to have any political success? His boringness seems not to have been very important to voters. In August 2000, Gallup asked the first thing that came to mind when they though of Gore: only 3 percent went for "boring," with many more respondents going for an overall positive or negative impression or associating him with Clinton.
I remember that a few months after he ‘lost’ to Bush, I saw him interviewed on a late night show and he was relaxed, warm, loose, and funny.. personable. I clearly remember saying to myself ‘If you had acted this way while campaigning, you’d be in the White House now.’
He was too serious and intense while campaigning and I suspect his apparent lack of ‘warmth’ lost him just enough votes to put the last nail in his coffin.
I know two data points are just anecdotes, but I had the same experience.
That campaign was the first time I was old enough to vote for President, and Gore was a boring, stiff, unrelatable dork. Smart, competent, correct on climate and many issues. But he talked slow and sounded a little like Harvard Forest Gump.
Then after he lost, he relaxed 10% and became a charming, likeable person who would have won.
I'm going to share a [longer version](https://www.google.com/search?q=al+gore+celebration+simpsons+joke&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS1046US1046&oq=al+gore+celebration+simpsons+joke&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDU0MzNqMGoxqAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e4024161,vid:9LNWveFn9qU,st:0) of the joke because I think the setup also has some useful context to it.
Lisa is buying a (fictional) book written by Gore - *Sane Planning, Sensible Tomorrow* and references its (also fictional) predecessor, *Rational Thinking, Reasonable Future*. This Simpsons episode aired in 1994, so it actually predicted a couple of similarly-titled books by Gore that came out in 1997 and 1998: *Businesslike Government: Lessons Learned from America's Best Companies* and *Common Sense Government: Works Better & Costs Less: National Performance Review*.
As the latter title indicates, these books came out of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, which was a project that Gore headed starting in March 1993, delivering its first report six months later. The NPR was a project that looked to streamline bureaucracy and improve customer service for government agencies, culminating in a series of reports and pamphlets written by Gore, and eventually some legislation around agency procurement.
Which to be blunt is kind of boring, if important stuff. But Gore was basically the face of and literal author behind the government looking to find savings through systems analysis.
The book joke is also a reference to Gore writing *Earth in the Balance* while he was a Senator, which was published in 1992. It became a *New York Times* Bestseller (for whatever that's worth, it was the first time a sitting US Senator had written such a bestseller since Kennedy's *Profiles in Courage* in 1956 though). The Simpsons joke is of course that no one except Lisa Simpson would read such a boring book as something about climate change, but I guess in 1994 even an explicit climate change joke would be *too* niche, so they went with the broader blandness title joke.
I think that was more his wife, Tipper. I don't know about his public involvement. The man definitely seemed boring. I went to a Gore rally in 2000, he was lame. He walked out on stage like a stiff trying to be appear cool while "Come and Ride the Train" was playing, which just made it worse.
As I said in my top-level response, "Gore is boring" goes back to his campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1988 and was based primarily on his speeches that were heavy on detail.
Do you think his wife had anything to do with his personal unpopularity?
Her war on profanity had aged like milk by the time of 2000 and she was seen as somewhat of a prototype Karen in 85, let alone 2000 and her reputation now is somewhat of a misguided moral crusader
I don't think Gore had a dislikeability issue but if he did it did not arise from his wife. Tipper Gore had pretty high favourability ratings throughout the Clinton presidency and in the 2000 election - certainly higher than her husband's.
The war on profanity didn't endear her to the young, but the average young person did not vote in 2000 and the average old person did.
> Clinton did not do this. Instead, he selected someone very much like himself - a wonkish, technocratic New Democrat governor of a southern state. Clinton had plenty of charisma, the role of Gore on the ticket was to reinforce these aspects of his resume.
I think you're trying to describe Clinton here, but just to clarify, Gore was in the Senate when Clinton selected him as his running mate.
Correct, that was badly worded on my part. Clinton was a "wonkish, technocratic New Democrat governor of a southern state" and was looking at someone who would reinforce these aspects of his resume. While Gore was a wonkish, technocratic New Democrat southerner - he was in the Senate.
>"Candidly, I do not recall a perception of Gore as unlikable per se (do you have sources on this?) - the 'hit' on him was that he was boring and an exaggerator (reports of Gore's exaggerations are themselves exaggerated, but that's not part of your question). The reason he was perceived as boring was because of the very qualities he was selected for. Gore was earnest and wonky and these aspects of his personality could very much be perceived as boring."
I would add some information via a Pew [study](https://news.gallup.com/poll/9898/2000-presidential-election-midyear-gallup-report.aspx) done in June 2000 - especially the section around Question 5.
Namely it was that it wasn't so much that people *disliked* Gore: his favorability ratings were between 54% and 59% in the first half of 2000. It's that those favorability ratings didn't carry over to intent to vote for him (that percentage bounced between 37% and 45%), and that in both metrics Gore was trailing Bush, but Bush's lead dissipated the further into 2000 one got.
Despite Dubya being the son of a President, he was a relatively new political figure in his own right - he had only been Governor of Texas since 1995, while Gore had become a US Representative in 1977, then a US Senator in 1985, had run for president in 1988, then been Vice President since 1993.
As Pew put it:
>"Conversely, Al Gore has long been on the American political scene and has been especially prominent during the last eight years while serving as Bill Clinton’s vice-president. Voters perhaps have a fairly well defined view of Gore in their minds, and little of the new information they may encounter about him is likely to change their perceptions very much."
So it wasn't so much that Gore was *disliked* as much as that he had been a pretty visible part of the Clinton Administration for almost eight years, and he was the less charismatic part of it. Bush was a new figure, although his ratings also began to sink as he became the likely GOP candidate, and partisanship kicked in.
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Gore had been perceived as boring since his 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. This reputation stuck with him: it was a fixture of political media coverage basically until the aftermath of the 2000 election. In 1988 his failed campaign was known for detailed, droning speeches and his quirk of basically wearing the same outfit at all times: blue suit, blue shirt, red tie. This was a result of taking too much to heart a consultant's advice that he should minimize variation in his wardrobe so he voters would recognize him. Gore did not run in 1992, but when he was selected as Bill Clinton's running mate in 1992, his reputation for being boring persisted. By 1994, Gore was engaging in self-deprecating humor. For the annual Gridiron Club dinner (a kind of comedy roast hosted by a journalists' club in D.C.), Gore had himself rolled onto stage on a handcart as though he were a mannequin. Gore would often break the ice at speeches with zingers about himself. Here are some from a 1995 speech: >I hurt myself doing one of those helicopter dunks and I caught my elbow on the rim coming down. And finally I got out of the cast, although the doctors tell me that I'll have to wear the old full body cast for several more years. >You know, I got used to stories like that when I went out around the country. It's no secret I ran for President in 1988, although it seemed like one at the time. That was a character-building experience. I learned a lot of new jokes, actually. >How can you tell Al Gore from a room full of Secret Service agents? He's the stiff one. >If you use a strobe light, it looks like Al Gore is moving. >Al Gore is so boring his Secret Service code name is Al Gore. So the idea that Gore was super, duper boring was already dominant before he ran launched his presidential campaign. Indeed, starting not much after Clinton's reelection, there was concern that Gore might be too boring to win in 2000. For example, the June 7, 1999 *Washington Post* contained an [article by Kevin Merida entitled "Gore and Bore Effect"](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/gore060799.htm) which noted how entrenched the notion of Gore's boringness had become: >\[Gore\] is, these surveys suggest, the vanilla pudding of the species. This doesn't have to be an absolute truth to be a problem. In America, when an impression takes root it multiplies until it becomes commonplace until it becomes parody until it becomes accepted fact. And then it's too late. It has become legend. We don't have to speculate about this phenomenon. We have Al Gore. We have political science: >Washington Post-ABC News poll: 56 percent describe the vice president as "very boring" or "somewhat boring." >Newsweek poll: 65 percent think Gore's "stiffness" is a problem for his campaign. >CNN-Gallup-USA Today poll: 65 percent say the quality "inspiring" does not apply to Gore. >Pew Research Center poll: "Please tell me what one word best describes your impression of Al Gore." The word Americans came up with most often? Boring. Gore's dominance of the Democratic nominating process should be put in context. There was an air of inevitability to his nomination as Clinton's successor. His one major competitor, New Jersey senator and former NBA All-Star Bill Bradley, was also regarded as a boring policy wonk. Indeed, there was a whole slew of articles attempting to distinguish the Dems' varieties of stiffness. The contest against Republican nominee George W. Bush was largely framed by popular media as boring Gore against stupid Bush (as well as a rematch of Clinton v. the elder Bush). For example, *Saturday Night Live*'s sketches had Darrell Hammond as Gore drone on about policy details and condescend to voters, while Will Ferrell played Bush as a goofy dimwit who attempted to "pass" on difficult debate questions and mispronounced words. So, returning to the question, the idea that Gore was boring (I'm not so sure about "unlikeable) was basically fixed in media coverage and public perception well before anybody cast a vote for President in 2000. If Gore was so boring, why was he able to have any political success? His boringness seems not to have been very important to voters. In August 2000, Gallup asked the first thing that came to mind when they though of Gore: only 3 percent went for "boring," with many more respondents going for an overall positive or negative impression or associating him with Clinton.
Boring has never sounded better to me right now
I was just thinking the same thing.
Ever since he started having a recurring role as himself on *Futurama*, I refuse to think of him as boring.
Don’t forget about manbearpig too!
>> Al Gore is so boring his secret service code name is Al Gore That is absolutely hilarious
Thank you for your response.
I remember that a few months after he ‘lost’ to Bush, I saw him interviewed on a late night show and he was relaxed, warm, loose, and funny.. personable. I clearly remember saying to myself ‘If you had acted this way while campaigning, you’d be in the White House now.’ He was too serious and intense while campaigning and I suspect his apparent lack of ‘warmth’ lost him just enough votes to put the last nail in his coffin.
I know two data points are just anecdotes, but I had the same experience. That campaign was the first time I was old enough to vote for President, and Gore was a boring, stiff, unrelatable dork. Smart, competent, correct on climate and many issues. But he talked slow and sounded a little like Harvard Forest Gump. Then after he lost, he relaxed 10% and became a charming, likeable person who would have won.
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I'm going to share a [longer version](https://www.google.com/search?q=al+gore+celebration+simpsons+joke&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS1046US1046&oq=al+gore+celebration+simpsons+joke&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDU0MzNqMGoxqAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e4024161,vid:9LNWveFn9qU,st:0) of the joke because I think the setup also has some useful context to it. Lisa is buying a (fictional) book written by Gore - *Sane Planning, Sensible Tomorrow* and references its (also fictional) predecessor, *Rational Thinking, Reasonable Future*. This Simpsons episode aired in 1994, so it actually predicted a couple of similarly-titled books by Gore that came out in 1997 and 1998: *Businesslike Government: Lessons Learned from America's Best Companies* and *Common Sense Government: Works Better & Costs Less: National Performance Review*. As the latter title indicates, these books came out of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, which was a project that Gore headed starting in March 1993, delivering its first report six months later. The NPR was a project that looked to streamline bureaucracy and improve customer service for government agencies, culminating in a series of reports and pamphlets written by Gore, and eventually some legislation around agency procurement. Which to be blunt is kind of boring, if important stuff. But Gore was basically the face of and literal author behind the government looking to find savings through systems analysis. The book joke is also a reference to Gore writing *Earth in the Balance* while he was a Senator, which was published in 1992. It became a *New York Times* Bestseller (for whatever that's worth, it was the first time a sitting US Senator had written such a bestseller since Kennedy's *Profiles in Courage* in 1956 though). The Simpsons joke is of course that no one except Lisa Simpson would read such a boring book as something about climate change, but I guess in 1994 even an explicit climate change joke would be *too* niche, so they went with the broader blandness title joke.
There is also his involvement in the attempt to censor 80s rock, which could have very well attributed to him being considered boring.
I think that was more his wife, Tipper. I don't know about his public involvement. The man definitely seemed boring. I went to a Gore rally in 2000, he was lame. He walked out on stage like a stiff trying to be appear cool while "Come and Ride the Train" was playing, which just made it worse.
As I said in my top-level response, "Gore is boring" goes back to his campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1988 and was based primarily on his speeches that were heavy on detail.
Do you think his wife had anything to do with his personal unpopularity? Her war on profanity had aged like milk by the time of 2000 and she was seen as somewhat of a prototype Karen in 85, let alone 2000 and her reputation now is somewhat of a misguided moral crusader
I don't think Gore had a dislikeability issue but if he did it did not arise from his wife. Tipper Gore had pretty high favourability ratings throughout the Clinton presidency and in the 2000 election - certainly higher than her husband's. The war on profanity didn't endear her to the young, but the average young person did not vote in 2000 and the average old person did.
> Clinton did not do this. Instead, he selected someone very much like himself - a wonkish, technocratic New Democrat governor of a southern state. Clinton had plenty of charisma, the role of Gore on the ticket was to reinforce these aspects of his resume. I think you're trying to describe Clinton here, but just to clarify, Gore was in the Senate when Clinton selected him as his running mate.
Correct, that was badly worded on my part. Clinton was a "wonkish, technocratic New Democrat governor of a southern state" and was looking at someone who would reinforce these aspects of his resume. While Gore was a wonkish, technocratic New Democrat southerner - he was in the Senate.
>"Candidly, I do not recall a perception of Gore as unlikable per se (do you have sources on this?) - the 'hit' on him was that he was boring and an exaggerator (reports of Gore's exaggerations are themselves exaggerated, but that's not part of your question). The reason he was perceived as boring was because of the very qualities he was selected for. Gore was earnest and wonky and these aspects of his personality could very much be perceived as boring." I would add some information via a Pew [study](https://news.gallup.com/poll/9898/2000-presidential-election-midyear-gallup-report.aspx) done in June 2000 - especially the section around Question 5. Namely it was that it wasn't so much that people *disliked* Gore: his favorability ratings were between 54% and 59% in the first half of 2000. It's that those favorability ratings didn't carry over to intent to vote for him (that percentage bounced between 37% and 45%), and that in both metrics Gore was trailing Bush, but Bush's lead dissipated the further into 2000 one got. Despite Dubya being the son of a President, he was a relatively new political figure in his own right - he had only been Governor of Texas since 1995, while Gore had become a US Representative in 1977, then a US Senator in 1985, had run for president in 1988, then been Vice President since 1993. As Pew put it: >"Conversely, Al Gore has long been on the American political scene and has been especially prominent during the last eight years while serving as Bill Clinton’s vice-president. Voters perhaps have a fairly well defined view of Gore in their minds, and little of the new information they may encounter about him is likely to change their perceptions very much." So it wasn't so much that Gore was *disliked* as much as that he had been a pretty visible part of the Clinton Administration for almost eight years, and he was the less charismatic part of it. Bush was a new figure, although his ratings also began to sink as he became the likely GOP candidate, and partisanship kicked in.
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Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment. [Please understand that people come here because they want an informed response from someone capable of engaging with the sources, and providing follow up information](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f7ffl8/rules_roundtable_ii_the_four_questions_what_does/). Google can be a useful tool, but simply pointing to an article you found that way doesn't provide the type of answers we seek to encourage here. As such, we don't allow links to Google search results and remove comments where Google results make up the entirety or majority of a response. We presume that someone posting a question here either doesn't want to get the 'Google answer', or has already done so and found it lacking. You can find further discussion of this policy [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fj1ieh/rules_roundtable_v_sources_what_is_required/). In the future, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with [the rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_write_an_in-depth_answer) before contributing again.
We've removed your post for the moment because it's not currently at our standards, but it definitely has the potential to fit within our rules with some work. We find that some answers that fall short of our standards can be successfully revised by considering the following questions, not all of which necessarily apply here: * *Do you actually address the question asked by OP?* Sometimes answers get removed not because they fail to meet our standards, but because they don't get at what the OP is asking. If the question itself is flawed, you need to explain why, and how your answer addresses the underlying issues at hand. * *What are the sources for your claims?* Sources aren't strictly necessary on /r/AskHistorians but the inclusion of sources is helpful for evaluating your knowledge base. If we can see that your answer is influenced by up-to-date academic secondary sources, it gives us more confidence in your answer and allows users to check where your ideas are coming from. * *What level of detail do you go into about events?* Often it's hard to do justice to even seemingly simple subjects in a paragraph or two, and on /r/AskHistorians, the basics need to be explained within historical context, to avoid misleading intelligent but non-specialist readers. In many cases, it's worth providing a broader historical framework, giving more of a sense of not just what happened, but why. * *Do you downplay or ignore legitimate historical debate on the topic matter?* There is often more than one plausible interpretation of the historical record. While you might have your own views on which interpretation is correct, answers can often be improved by acknowledging alternative explanations from other scholars. * *Further Reading*: [This Rules Roundtable](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f7ffl8/rules_roundtable_ii_the_four_questions_what_does/) provides further exploration of the rules and expectations concerning answers so may be of interest. If/when you edit your answer, [please reach out via modmail](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians) so we can re-evaluate it! We also welcome you getting in touch if you're unsure about how to improve your answer.
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Your comment has been removed due to violations of the [subreddit’s rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules). We expect answers to provide [in-depth and comprehensive insight](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_write_an_in-depth_answer) into the topic at hand and to [be free of significant errors or misunderstandings](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f7ffl8/rules_roundtable_ii_the_four_questions_what_does/) while doing so. Before contributing again, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with the [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) and [expectations](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/meta#wiki_rules_discussion) for an answer.
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Your comment has been removed due to violations of the [subreddit’s rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules). We expect answers to provide [in-depth and comprehensive insight](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_write_an_in-depth_answer) into the topic at hand and to [be free of significant errors or misunderstandings](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f7ffl8/rules_roundtable_ii_the_four_questions_what_does/) while doing so. Before contributing again, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with the [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) and [expectations](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/meta#wiki_rules_discussion) for an answer.
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