Can we settle this for once and for all?
It’s damn infuriating to see smug conservatives continue to trot out this old canard whenever they get the chance: Mitt Romney has been going around claiming that Al Gore “took credit” for the Internet. Well, it’s all politics, but the next time Romney looks in the mirror I wonder if he sees the liar that I see when he pulls shit like that.
Al Gore did not claim he “invented” the internet. He said he “took the initiative” in the creation of the internet. Apparently, it seems to shock many people that anyone was “involved” in the creation of such a massively important and successful project. Do people think it was always there? Do they think it was created by private companies?
Look it up. Even better, here it is, from Wikipedia:
First, the actual original quote from Gore, from a March 9, 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN:
I’ll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I’ve traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.[105]
Yes, he could have phrased it better, but what he actually said– as opposed to the deliberate misquote making the rounds– was true:
Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn noted that, “as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship […] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication.”[53]
So Al Gore was not just on the congressional committee that oversaw the creation of the internet: he played a leadership role on the issue.
Even Newt Gingrich acknowledged as much.
And let’s not forget that Gore served honorably in Viet Nam. Can you name a single Republican running in this election who did? Come on– try it.