Bill Clinton chose U.S. Senator Al Gore to be his running mate for the presidential election of 1992. After winning the U.S. presidential election in 1992, Al Gore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Gore were re-elected to a second term in the U.S. presidential election in 1996.
During his time as Vice President, Al Gore was mostly a behind the scenes player. However, many experts consider him to be one of the most active and influential Vice Presidents in U.S. history. One of Gore's major accomplishments as Vice President was the National Performance Review, which pointed out waste, fraud, and other abuse in the federal government and stressed the need for cutting the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations.
His vice presidency wouldn't last forever, so Gore aimed for the 2000 election to try his hand at being president. Al Gore was doing some pre-campaigning in early 2000 and just so happened to be coming to our town. Getting the chance to meet the current vice president and even future president of the United States doesn't come along everyday, so we were on a mission to get his autograph.
Since he was still vice president at the time, we knew secret service would probably be crawling everywhere. He was going to be talking to the youth of America at a nearby high school and even though we weren't invited we decided to crash the party. Driving down the street and seeing cop cars on every street sure drove some doubt into our minds. We considered giving up already, but Earl still thought we had a fighting chance and parked the car down one of the neighborhoods. From their we headed to the front entrance and were greeted by a lady with a (da na na) guest list.
Of course we weren't on the guest list, but Earl thought it was possible for good things to happen if we just hung out. Good things did happen and they let us in because there was some extra space in the auditorium. We were high school students at the time so that probably helped somewhat. Secret service greeted us at the door in their own little way of checking us for dangerous objects. They also forced both of us to waste one picture in our cameras to make sure it was legit. We couldn't believe that we actually made it into the event and decided to sit down on the far side of the auditorium. Our seats were close to an open door, which hopefully meant this was the entrance/exit door of vice president Gore.
We were sitting there waiting for the event to start when out of the corner of our eyes Mr. Gore came walking in. He walked in from the door next to us and went right up to both of us to shake hands. The event hadn't even begun yet and we were happy because at least we got to shake his hand. After shaking some more hands he headed straight to the center of the auditorium and began his speech. Gore didn't have a long speech because he wanted to open it up for a question and answer session. Gore was quick with great answers and there wasn't a question he avoided. The Q&A had been going on for what seemed like decades and it was time for him to end the open question and answer segment.
However, Gore said, "I'll stay to answer every last question" and then surprisingly the crowd was allowed to swarm around Al Gore and chat with him. We had a very important question to ask... well maybe not in political terms. We waited our turn and asked him for an autograph. Al didn't hesitate and signed our pictures immediately. He was a really nice guy and also had no problem letting each of us get a photo with him. We thanked him and started to walk off when a nearby reporter pulled Earl aside and wanted to interview him about Mr. Gore. The little excerpt ended up in the paper the next day, which was really cool. Both of us were very lucky to get into this event and happy that it ended in our favor.
Sterling and Earl had another opportunity to get Mr. Gore's autograph when he came to our college campus later that year. This time around the campaign was in full swing and things were close between Al Gore and George W. Bush. We were way too late to get good spots in line, but got in nonetheless. Both of us got pretty good positions at the fence and prepared for the long wait.
It was crazy and entertaining watching all the secret service on the roofs fully armed and ready for anything. After quite a long wait, Mr. Gore walked out and didn't waste any time getting to his speech. This speech was much shorter and also well rehearsed, which was different from the last time we saw him. Just like that the speech was over and he jumped off the stage, but we couldn't see where he went.
We didn't want to lose our positions at the fence, but nothing was happening which freaked us out. Earl told Sterling to go and see if he was signing autographs at the fence and so Sterling headed off. When Sterling didn't come back Earl started to get nervous. Earl couldn't stand it any longer and left our spot as well. Earl spotted a massive crowd and saw Gore shaking people's hands down the line.
Earl pushed his way to a nearby hole in the line and was in a good position to ask for an autograph. When Earl asked Gore to sign he said, "give it to them, they'll get it back to you". Before Earl could say anything else they took his binder w/picture and continued down the line. It was about that time when Earl spotted Sterling doing the same thing. Gore shook a few more hands and then took off. It's a good thing each of us decided to leave because he obviously didn't walk over to our previous location.
We waited and waited after the speech but there was still no sign of anyone returning with our binders. Both of us finally asked a security guard about the problem, but he had no idea of what we were talking about. In his opinion he thought we were screwed and shrugged off our problems. We saw a lady who looked important and asked her the same question. She said, "Oh they were passing out autographed stuff awhile ago", let me go see if we still have your stuff. The lady came back with only one binder, complete with autographed picture.
Earl was the lucky owner of these two items, but Sterling's things were unfortunately missing. She felt really bad and gave Sterling a ticket that was signed and promised him she would get them to send an autographed picture in the mail. She took down each of our names/addresses, but nothing ever came of it (which sucked).