Gore's environmentalism is clearly a matter of conviction. And, as such, it is an aberration. Gore doesn't really believe much of what he says in public. He couldn't. Belief requires convictions, and on many subjects, Gore doesn't have any.

Take abortion. For the first 10 years of his career, Gore was a pro-life Democrat. His stand against using government money to pay for abortions-like his position against gay rights legislation-was central to Gore's well-tended image as a "raging moderate," which in turn was critical to his success in Tennessee. Gore's father had lost his seat for becoming too liberal for southern voters, and Gore internalized the lesson. Until at least the mid-1980s, letters Gore's office sent to constituents were bluntly anti-abortion. "As you know, I have strongly opposed federal funding of abortions," began one typical 1984 reply to a voter. "In my opinion, it is always wrong to spend federal funds for what is arguably the taking of a human life." During his seven years in the House, Gore voted with the National Right to Life Committee 84 percent of the time. In 1984, he cast a ballot in favor of the Siliander Amendment, which defined a "Person" to include "unborn children from the moment of conception."

Sometime during his run for president, Gore decided to become pro-choice. There is nothing intrinsically dishonest about changing one's position, of course, but Gore refused to admit he had ever been anything but pro-choice. The Siliander Amendment made this pose difficult, yet Gore decided to brazen his way through it anyway. "Since there's a record of that vote, we have only one choice," a Gore political adviser told U.S. News and World Report at the time. "In effect, what we have to do is deny, deny, deny... We've muddled the point, and with luck, the attention will turn elsewhere." For years, Gore stuck to this strategy as tightly as he once had to his blue suits.

In 1992, pressed by Tim Russert during a television appearance to explain his former views, Gore barely responded to the question. "I believe that a woman ought to have the right to choose," he said. Gore repeated the phrase, robot-like, seven times. After a while, Russert, and then the rest of the press corps, gave up. And after a while, Gore's previous position on abortion didn't seem relevant.

Gore now is among the most visible pro-choice crusaders in the country. Yet, he has never lost his desire to play both sides of the issue politically. In January of this year, he gave one of the more emotional speeches of his career, to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League in Washington. As he recounted acts of violence committed by protesters at abortion clinics, Gore exploded. "We will not let you destroy the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood that is America! We will find you!" he yelled, Khrushchev-like. Gore soon calmed down, and moments later he was boasting of his efforts to make peace with pro-lifers. "Four years ago," he said, "I personally reached out to individuals who are leaders on the other side of this issue, and asked, Is there a way to make common cause in the effort to reduce the number of times women find themselves in a situation where they go through this process of choosing?" The pro-lifers' response, Gore claimed: "We just can't do it." Gore's statement to NARAL is fascinating for its Orwellian qualities alone-"this process of choosing"-but it is also worth considering for another reason: It is almost certainly untrue. Douglas Johnson, federal legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, heard Gore's speech.

Later that week, as it happened, Johnson attended a strategy meeting of the leaders of virtually every significant anti-abortion group in the country, with the exception of the Catholic church. "After my presentation," Johnson says, "I asked if anybody had participated in such a meeting with Al Gore, or had ever heard of it before. And nobody had." Johnson later checked with the Catholic bishops conference. "They also were baffled by this and had never heard such a thing," he says. Why would Al Gore, who doesn't need the support of pro-lifers (and for the most part, doesn't have it), pretend to court their support? Out of habit, probably. After a lifetime in politics, pretending comes naturally. Not even politics, however, accounts for Gore's willingness to exploit his family's tragedy for political gain.

Consider Gore's speeches at the last two Democratic conventions. In 1992, during his address to delegates, Gore described in excruciating detail the car accident that nearly killed his only son three years before. "Tipper and I watched as he was thrown 30 feet through the air and scraped another 20 feet on the pavement after hitting the ground," Gore recounted. "I ran to his side and held him and called his name, but he was limp and still, without breath or pulse. His eyes were open with the empty stare of death . . ." It went on.

"The worst thing about Gore," former senator Eugene McCarthy said later, "was how he read that heavy stuff right off the TelePrompTer." But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that Gore's account of his son's accident wasn't even original. He had lifted it almost word-for-word from the introduction to his eco-opus, Earth in the Balance. (It is a book laced with glimpses of Gore's signature ghoulishness. At one point he describes the overgrazing of pasture land as "a crushing blow, like a dashboard striking the forehead of a child.") At the next Democratic convention four years later, Gore again used the suffering of his relatives to make a polemical point. Over the course of 17 paragraphs, Gore explained how watching his sister's agonizing death from lung cancer-"savaged by that terrible disease ... she could barely retain consciousness. We sometimes didn't know if she could hear what we were saying or recognize us"-gave him new appreciation for President Clinton's anti-smoking initiatives. Gore recounted his last conversation with his sister: "Do you bring me hope?" she asked, "her eyes focused tensely right at me." Gore didn't answer. Instead, he said, "'I love you.' And then I knelt by her bed and held her hand. And in a very short time, her breathing became labored and then she breathed her last breath.... And that is why until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking." The day Nancy Hunger died must have been a very busy one for Al Gore, for at some point during the same day, July 11, 1984, he also found time to give a speech before the Kiwanis Club in Knoxville, across the state from his sister's deathbed. He also squeezed in an interview with a wire-service reporter. Whether he managed to do these things before or after his sister's last words to him is not clear, since Gore didn't mention her in the UPI interview he gave. Instead, he criticized his opponent in that year's Senate race, Victor Ashe, and talked about the specifics of their upcoming televised debates. It is clear that, lung-cancer death or not, Gore didn't talk much about curbing smoking that year.

"I can remember in 1984, when he was running for Senate, having a couple of long conversations with him," says a newspaper reporter who covered Gore. "He was talking explicitly about wooing the tobacco vote, and about how he was trying to make a distinction between the tobacco farmers and the tobacco industry. He was willing to call the tobacco industry Merchants of Death kind of thing, but the tobacco farmers were stout-hearted individuals." As it turned out, the tobacco industry wasn't that bad, either. Gore, for years after his sister's death, took money from tobacco companies, even bragged about being a tobacco farmer himself Just 13 days after Nancy Gore Hunger died from tobacco in 1984, Gore received a $1000 campaign contribution from the U.S. Tobacco Company PAC. There is a lot of competition, but Al Gore may be the biggest phony in the White House today.

Don't tell that to his supporters, though. They'll never believe it. In 1985, Jimmy Knight resigned as director of the Alabama Democratic party, citing the corrosive influence of liberals on the national party. "We in Alabama reserve the right to discriminate against homosexuals," he said defiantly. Shortly before he resigned, Knight hosted a dinner for Gore, and his support has continued. Knight no longer holds party office, but he remains a fervent fan of the vice president's. It appears at first an unlikely alliance. Al Gore-Harvard-educated, Washington-bred, the man who pushed Clinton to make good on his promise to let gays serve in the military-would seem to be the embodiment of all that Knight dislikes in his party. Knight doesn't see it that way. But then, he doesn't see Al Gore that way, either. "He's a moderate," says Knight resolutely. "He's always been a moderate."