Vice president an old Tahoe hand

Tahoe Daily Tribune

July 27, 1997
By Patrick McCartney
Tribune Senior Staff Writer

Vice President Al Gore's love affair with Lake Tahoe began 26 years before the opening Friday of the Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum.

After presiding over a workshop at the Lake of the Sky Amphitheater in South Lake Tahoe, the vice president recalled his first visit to Lake Tahoe and reflected on the significance of the two-day presidential summit on the lake's troubled environment. "I had just come back from Viet Nam in 1971," Gore said in an interview with the Tahoe Daily Tribune. "Tipper and I threw a two-person tent in the trunk of our Chevy Impala, and took off cross country."

The young Army veteran and his wife ended up at Lake Tahoe, camping out near the North Shore and taking hikes in the hills. Gore recalled visiting a casino during their stay, but the former divinity student didn't stay long.

"We didn't have many quarters," he said.

The visit was the first of many for the Gores to Lake Tahoe, the most recent when he was still a United States senator from Tennessee.

Sitting at a small table in a recreation vehicle parked outside the amphitheater, Gore described the political message he and the president planned to deliver at the Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum. The challenge facing Lake Tahoe residents, he said, has national repercussions.

"It's the same question the country faces at large," Gore said. "How do we improve and protect the environment while still improving the economy and creating more jobs? The economy and the environment are not only compatible, but self-reinforcing."

When pressed to explain how the administration can make financial commitments to Lake Tahoe in the face of budget deficits and an occasionally unfriendly Congress, Gore said it was simply a matter of priorities.

"You pay for it by making Lake Tahoe a high priority, and taking the money from lower-priority items," Gore said. "The importance of these two days is that the president is making Lake Tahoe a national priority."

He compared the likely outcome of the Lake Tahoe summit to the administration's actions to protect the Everglades in Florida. Americans tend to support spending for special places like the Everglades and Lake Tahoe, he said. "There are not that many places in the whole world, let alone the country, that have the special qualities that Lake Tahoe has," Gore said. "If you make it a priority, everything else falls in place. Lake Tahoe has a special hold on the American imagination. Sen. Harry Reid made the point. His father never saw Lake Tahoe in person, but he talked about it his whole life."

And, even though Congress follows its own agenda, he added, the president can exercise the influence of his office to convince them to support his initiatives for Lake Tahoe.

"The power of the president is the power to persuade," Gore said. "That includes the threat of a veto and the use of the office as a bully pulpit."

Before leaving for a private meeting with representatives of the Washoe Tribe of California and Nevada, Gore brushed aside comments made Tuesday by Gov. Pete Wilson of California. While signing an agreement with Nevada Gov. Bob Miller that renewed the two states' commitment to Lake Tahoe, Wilson questioned whether the presidential forum would simply be one big photo opportunity for the administration. "Anyone who thinks my commitment to the environment started a couple of weeks ago, doesn't know me very well," Gore concluded.