Reporting
Writings from The New Yorker
The Wilderness Campaign:
Al Gore
Hey, Dwayne? . . . Dwayne?”
“Yes, Mr. Vice-President?”
“Could I have some more coffee?”
“Yes, Mr. Vice-President. Coming . . .”
“Thanks, Dwayne.”
It was ten in the morning in Nashville, a quiet weekday, with most of the neighbors off to work, and Albert Gore, Jr., sat at the head of his dining-room table eating breakfast. His plate was crowded with scrambled eggs, bacon, toast. His pond-size mug had, in a flash, been refilled by Dwayne Kemp, his cook, a skilled and graceful man who had been employed by the Gores when, as his boss often puts it, “we were still working in the White House.” Freshly showered and shaved, Gore was wearing a midnight-blue shirt and gray wool trousers. In the months after losing the battle for Florida’s electoral votes and conceding the Presidency to George W. Bush, on December 13, 2000, Gore seemed to let himself go, dropping out of sight, traveling around Spain, Italy, and Greece for six weeks with his ...
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