Internet inventor snagged by own tendency!!
Tendency to Embellish Fact Snags Gore
By RICHARD L. BERKE
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — For years, his political opponents have groused that Vice President Al Gore has trouble with facts. They pounced on statements he made about his service in Vietnam, about his record in Congress and even about the price he has to pay for his dog's arthritis medicine.
On Tuesday, they got even more ammunition: Several of Mr. Gore's comments in his debate with Gov. George W. Bush set off a fresh outcry over what even some of his supporters acknowledge is a tendency to embellish anecdotes about his roles in events.
"It's a weird pattern that has emerged," Karl Rove, the chief strategist for Mr. Bush, said in an interview. "We have these episodes in which Gore is playing Forrest Gump or Zelig."
Mr. Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, issued a statement saying he was "puzzled and saddened" by Mr. Gore's misstatements, while the conservative New York Post trumpeted "Liar! Liar!" as its main headline today.
While many politicians are prone to spice up a story here and there, Republicans and Democrats say Mr. Gore's shading of the truth has become so frequent that some politicians are no longer dismissing it as sloppy oratory from a candidate under the glare of television cameras.
This predilection of Mr. Gore's is all the more surprising because it often involves trivial matters — ones that could easily be checked — such as how Mr. Gore recalled a childhood lullaby that did not exist.
Even as he tried to defend Mr. Gore, Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party, could not come up with an explanation for the misstatements. "I have no idea," he said. "I'm not a psychiatrist."
Mr. Gore's most recent troubles began with the first question of the debate. The moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, noted that Mr. Gore had once questioned whether his opponent had the experience to be president and asked him what he meant. Mr. Gore denied that he had ever raised questions about Mr. Bush's qualifications for the presidency. The truth is, he had. In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April, Mr. Gore cited Mr. Bush's call for a tax cut and posed this question: "Does he have the experience to be president?"
Then there was Mr. Gore's story of a 15-year-old girl in Sarasota, Fla., who he said is such a victim of school crowding that she has to stand in class. The fact is, the girl has a desk, and went without one for only a day.
At another point, Mr. Gore said he had traveled with James Lee Witt, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to inspect fire and flooding damage in Texas in June 1998. In fact, Mr. Gore went to Texas, but not with Mr. Witt.
At another point, Mr. Gore said he "took a risk" in asking the former Prime Minister of Russia, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, to become personally involved in negotiating an end to the conflict in Kosovo. In fact, President Boris Yeltsin of Russia had two weeks early designated Mr. Chernomyrdin as a special envoy to the Balkans and the diplomatic mission that Mr. Gore described had been initiated by other top officials in Russia, Europe and the United States.
In an interview last weekend, Mr. Gore volunteered that PBS had never invited him to be appear on a documentary about presidential debates. But officials at PBS said he had been invited personally, and the vice president's own spokesman said the campaign had rejected the offer.
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