Albert Arnold Gore

AT FIRST U.S. Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) seems too jovial and soft-spoken to be one of the heroes in the Senate debate on Vietnam. But since December, 1964, Gore has been unyielding in his vigorous opposition to the war.

After the Foreign Relations Committee's hearings on Vietnam in February, 1966, Gore told his colleagues that their committee could not change Administration policy unless it went "over the President's head to the people." He followed his own advice, and now, he notes with obvious pride, "I'm probably on the lceture circuit to colleges more than any other member of the U.S. Senate."

Although Gore considers public pressure on the President important, he shares Sen. J. W. Fulbright's desire to make foreign affairs a matter of "teamwork" with the Executive. Occasionally Fulbright indicates that he might be happy just to have the President ask his committee's advice, but Gore thinks the goal should be approval or disapproval of basic policy.

The Johnson Administration, of course, is unwilling even to consult dovish Senators before it makes decisions on the war. Last week Fulbright had to threaten a delay of the foreign aid authorization to compel Secretary of State Dean Rusk to testify, but Gore would rather not use that sort of pressure. He is confident that the complexity of world problems and the force of public opinion will lead future Administrations to seek the Senate's advice, if only to share the blame for their policies.

Gore's seat on the Finance Committee keeps him close to the gold crisis and the President's fiscal policies, and he uses the opportunity to attack the war from another angle. Vietnam has created a "crisis of confidence in American leadership," Gore says, and the Administration's two-price gold system is "just another temporary palliative" in response to this fundamental problem. He supports the tax increase, though he thinks more severe measures are needed. But the ultimate answer, he says, is that "we must end the war."

His solution for ending the conflict is "a tolerable political arrangement that would permit honorable disengagement of U.S. troops as quickly as feasible." This suggestion is one of the most sophisticated positions any politician has taken openly, since it amounts to American withdrawal masked by a face-saving political agreement. Gore admits that his proposal would involve humiliation and even a sense of defeat for "our leaders and our people," but he points out that the only alternative is a "historic catastrophe."

GORE'S soft smile hides an essential hardness. Sometimes he argues a trivial point stubbornly. A sensitive question can bring an abrupt dismissal--he refuses to speculate on his political standing in Tennessee or whether he might endorse Robert Kennedy. But it would probably be difficult for Gore to challenge his state party's allegiance to the President. Southern Governors control their parties, and Buford Ellington of Tennessee has close personal and political ties to Lyndon Johnson.

More important, Tennessee has become a two-party state. In 1964 Gore's Goldwater-Republican opponent charged that the Senator was too liberal for Tennessee. Gore polled only 54 per cent of the vote, and that was before he announced his unpopular opposition to the war.

Although he does have a liberal record, Gore has maintained his independence during his 15 years in the Senate. He supported cloture and the civil rights bill two weeks ago but voted against the 1964 civil rights act because of its penalty provisions for school districts. In 1960 he stressed the importance of a bold fiscal policy to President-elect Kennedy but two years later fought the Kennedy tax cut. Last spring, drawing on his experience in 1956 as chairman of an investigation of campaign financing, he led the liberals' struggle to repeal the Long Campaign Financing Act. But now he and Sen. Long are writing a bill with a new approach to funding campaigns.

While Gore admits that he "treasures" his seat in the Senate, he seems to keep his importance in perspective. When Master Gill introduced him to a Leverett House audience as a "wise, humane, and dedicated legislator," he smiled at the hyperbole. But the audience accepted it, and they suspected that he did too.