The Gores Run Aground

If there was one political couple considered least likely to separate or divorce, it was Al and Tipper Gore. The news that they are calling it quits after 40 years of marriage came as a huge shock to their circle of political friends. The Gores were college sweethearts with never a hint of marital scandal, and if they had grown apart in recent years, they didn't seem that different from many empty nesters who had reached that point in their lives where they had separate interests, and the determination to pursue them.

Without the political imperative of needing to appear in public as the happy couple, separate interests evidently became separate lives. I give the Gores credit for being forthright and not continuing the sham of a marriage in name only, if that's what it had become. But I'm sure it's a sad moment for both of them, for their four children, and for all of us who imagined the Gores as a family that defied the odds and stayed together in the brutal world of national politics.

We can never know what goes on inside someone else's marriage. For all we know, the events that led to their eventual separation could go back to unresolved anger and feelings related to their son's accident in 1991. The boy broke away from his father and dashed into the path of a car on the opening day of Orioles baseball. His long recovery and the emotional problems Tipper experienced over almost losing a child kept Gore from running for president in 1992.

We look around for a reason, but sometimes a relationship just runs its course, and it's nobody's fault. The e-mail that the Gores sent out to announce their separation says that they made their decision after long and careful thought, and they ask everyone to respect their privacy.

Since leaving Washington, Al Gore had thrown himself into the cause of his life, climate change, a career that has proved both lucrative and all-consuming. Tipper had become a global-warming widow, the wonky version of a golf widow, and she longed to be taken seriously in her own right as a photographer. An exhibit of her photos of homeless people in the Washington area won acclaim in the 1980s. During the '92 campaign, she would take pictures of the candidates, and seemed more comfortable behind the lens than in front of it. She is a fine photographer and may have resented the demands of political life for the toll they took on a career she might have had.

One friend recalled seeing her response to friendly inquiries at a recent Washington event that she attended without her husband. Asked where he was, and how he was, Tipper replied, "Oh, if he were here, he would just suck the air out of the room." Maybe she got tired of living in his shadow. Whatever went awry, the Gores had a good long run together, and the ties that bind them will no doubt continue in many ways, just not in the way we had come to expect. Just as their lengthy kiss at the 2000 convention revived Gore's faltering presidential campaign, the e-mail today revealing their separation is an even bigger signal than Al's growing a beard and gaining weight that the Gores are done with politics.