Senator Albert Gore, Sr.: Tennessee Maverick.

Senator Albert Gore, Sr.: Tennessee Maverick. By Kyle Longley. With a foreword by Al Gore Jr. Southern Biography. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. Pp. xviii, 350. $39.95, ISBN 0-8071-2980-1.)

For most casual observers of politics, the name Albert Gore conjures memories of the former Tennessee senator, vice president to Bill Clinton, and loser in the 2000 presidential election. Few of those people, outside of Tennessee perhaps, would recognize the name as that of Tennessee's first Senator Gore, Albert Gore Sr. To correct this lapse in historical memory Kyle Longley has written a solid examination and the first scholarly biography, surprisingly, on the man who, when asked by Strom Thurmond on the floor of the U.S. Senate to sign the so-called Southern Manifesto, responded with a resounding "Hell no!" and thus marked his legacy as a political nonconformist (to any interest group, much less massive resistance types) (p. 2). Longley makes a convincing argument that Gore's independence and individualism are mostly responsible for his underappreciated political legacy. He refused to cater to any one group and often succeeded in angering many at the same time. Gore endeared himself neither to the liberal bloc of the U.S. Senate, with whom he voted most of the time, nor to his fellow Tennesseans, who thought less of him as the race issue grew in prominence in southern politics and as he increasingly questioned the Vietnam War.

The Gore that Longley reveals to us is one who agreed with many liberal ideas about the benefits of the federal government, especially in the regulation of business and the economy and in social programs. Yet, he opposed the accumulation of national debt. An early cold warrior, Gore changed his views on the subject when he realized that in certain applications, American foreign policy was "betraying core American values" (p. 3). He eventually questioned American involvement in the Vietnam War, which led to electoral struggles at home in Tennessee.

Longley's portrayal of Gore is also one of a poor southern boy made good. Gore hailed from Possum Hollow, Tennessee, and became a teacher and later a U.S. senator. Truly a self-made southern boy, Gore' s upbringing fostered an independent and populist streak that served him well in regional and national politics and that contributed to his political legacy.

Of course, Gore was a southern liberal, like Estes Kefauver, Claude Pepper, and Frank Porter Graham. Liberal because of their belief in the power of the federal government, especially social programs, to improve the South and because of their views on civil rights, these men were safe politically as long as the race issue remained in the background. They safely pursued federal money and programs as a means of aiding their constituents. That changed after Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and Gore's refusal to sign the Southern Manifesto. By 1970, Gore became "target number one," writes Longley, which resulted in Gore's narrow loss in the 1970 senate race to Bill Brock, the Republican candidate (p. 217). Brock was supported politically and financially by Richard Nixon, who despised Gore for the latter's attacks on the administration's Vietnam policies, its plans to construct an antiballistic missile system, and its nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth to the U.S. Supreme Court. Southern liberals were vulnerable in elections across the South, and Gore was the next victim of political backlash and the changing nature of southern and national politics.

Longley eschews a conventional conclusion for a short chapter entitled "Out of the Limelight," which focuses as much on Al Jr. as it does on his father (p. 241). This is a risky tack, but it works well for Longley because Gore Sr.'s aspirations regarding his son consumed him at times. Much of his life following his own defeat in 1970 focused on contributing to his son's electoral success and working toward the goal of eventually seeing Al Jr. become president of the United States. Furthermore, the South's dismissal of Al Sr. after his refusal to sign the manifesto of 1956 is matched by a similar dismissal of his son in the 2000 presidential election when Al Jr. failed to win even his home state. It is not easy writing about U.S. senators with long and successful careers, but Longley has done it as well as anyone with this solid biography of a man who described himself as going "down with both guns blazing for what I believed to be right" (p. 217).

GORDON E. HARVEY

University of Louisiana at Monroe