Gores' Marriage Goes Caput

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright June 4, 2010
All Rights Reserved.                                

              Only befitting the man who once claimed he invented the Internet, former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper announced over e-mail that their marriage is caput, stunning the once model couple that stole the show at the 2000 Democratic National Convention with an interminable kiss.  Married at age 21 and 22, Al and Tipper showed no signs of the same estrangement as his former boss, President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, whose scandalous affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky practically took down his presidency in 1998.  After dragging the country through an exhausting impeachment scandal, Gore couldn’t quite make it to the White House in 2000, losing to former President George W. Bush by a razor’s edge, decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.  With all the positives of Clinton’s strong economy, it didn’t land Gore in the Oval Office.

            Gore lost the presidency to Bush, in part, from so-called Clinton-fatigue, where  voters, especially crossover and independents, tired of the Lewinsky scandal, leaving a bad taste for many Americans.  Gore’s strong point, unlike his former boss, was his apparently close relationship with Tipper.  Unlike Al and Tipper, Bill and Hillary were seen as a political marriage, one for image and convenience, not love.  Little did anyone know at the time that the Gores, like so many other couples, put on a happy public face, not telling the real story about their marriage.  “We tend to mistakenly believe that once people reach a certain point in a marriage, they just stop splitting up,” says Betsy Stevenson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.  “But that’s simply not true,” reciting data about the steady divorce rates among long-term marriages.

            Few things last forever but mature adults are supposed to work out the kinks of long-term relationships.  Forty-years of marriage is nothing to sneeze at, hardly considered flaky by anyone’s standards.  While the Gores are certainly entitled to do as they wish, it’s misleading to blame their decision on only demographics.  “After a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate,” read the official e-mail, Tuesday, June 1.  “This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together,” dispelling speculation about a possible affair.  With Tipper’s well-reported bouts of depression, one wonders whether the couple “grew apart” or whether Al simply bailed out as Tipper’s caregiver.  Whatever Al’s frenzied schedule since leaving the White House—including winning a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and Academy Award—relationships just don’t die.

            Gore’s carefully worded press release emphasized the “mutual” decision, putting tabloids on notice that there’s no dirt.  Admitting that Al travels frequently automatically raise issues about possible alternative relationships, though none were reported.  It’s unrealistic to think, unless the 63-year-old former veep suffers from unknown medical condition that robs him of his libido, he has no relationships.  “It’s not inconceivable that people’s desires, preferences, and interests would have changed enough over 40 years that they’d decide they’d be better off splitting up,” said Evergreen State College professor Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage:  A History,” failing to acknowledge powerful entanglements that tend to keep people married.  “If the marriage is on the rocks,” film director Woody Allen once said, “the rocks are usually in bed,” referring to a break in affection and intimacy.

            Given that the Gores have spent sometimes months apart, it’s unrealistic to think that either one or both of them haven’t developed alternative relationships.  Al’s widely published lectures on “global warming” or Tipper’s reported photographic work had nothing to do with why they decided to break up.  Break-ups invariably have to do with a fatal split in the physical and emotional intimacy between couples.  How long the Gores have not had a functional marriage is anyone’s guess.  “People see this as sad, but I don’t see how we can look at a 40-year marriage and say it’s a failure,” said Wharton’s Stevenson, missing the point.  When long-term couples break up there’s a real failure on some level to fulfill important needs for one or both the partners.  While neither Al nor Tipper are exactly seniors, it’s difficult to replace the trust and complexity of a 40-year marital partnership.

            Unlike most couples, the Gores are independently wealthy, not in need of one another for financial support.  No matter how much the break-up looks amicable, there are always issues at stake, especially disappointing the extended family.  Children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins are all affected by divorce.  Rather than a perfunctory press release, it would be helpful to know whether the nation’s former second couple tried some marriage counseling, a prudent step before couples with such long histories decide to call it quits.  Saying they “grew apart” says nothing about what really went wrong.  Al Gore once told a reporter he and Tipper inspired author Erich Segal’s 1970 best-selling novel “Love Story.”  Like Al’s claim to inventing the Internet, Segal denied any such claim.  Al and Tipper can try to control the story but sooner or later the truth will come out.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.