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8 TARGET NUMBER ONE IN NOVEMBER 1970, Gore sat down and wrote his colleague, Frank Church. It was only a few days after his defeat by Republican Bill Brock in a hard, nasty campaign watched bymany political observers. Despite being tired and discouraged , he remained defiant: "In this business of politics, one must live or die by the sword. Mine has been a long, honorable, and fruitful career. The people made a decision and I accept it. . ." "Even so," "I would rather to have gone down with both guns blazing for what I believed to be right as to cavil or compromise , or to whimper and run because the odds were so great. The causes for which I fought are not dead; the truth will rise again."1 From 1969 to 1970, Gore found himself embroiled in numerous battles that ultimately contributed to his defeat. The liberal/progressive Democratic coalition was itself in retreat, largely leaderless after the departure of LBJ and Humphrey . While Richard Nixon had won the presidency only by a small margin, he claimed a popular mandate and aggressively attacked the Democrats on many fronts—taxes, Supreme Court nominations, Vietnam, and weapons systems. Over time, Gore found himself one of the primary targets of the venom of the White House, which threw its weight behind the well-financed campaign of Rep. Bill Brock. From the start, it was a fight for his political life, and Gore knew it. Although political prospects looked bleak for him and his party as the 1969 congressional session opened, Gore had returned to his job with his typical doggedness .2 However, he encountered a much different Washington than the year before. Nixon, whom Gore despised, took center stage. He was not an ideologue like Barry Goldwater, but he was intensely partisan and combative and in many ways much more dangerous. He brought a legion of like-minded men into the executive branch. While there had been conflict between Gore and Johnson, it was nothing compared to what would develop between him and Nixon. In the winter of 1969, Gore and Nixon clashed over the president's proposal to create an antiballistic missile (ABM) system. In the mid-1960s, Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara had proposed a limited ABM system, partly in response to a Russian plan to build one to protect Moscow. In July 1968, 2 '7 following the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Washington and Moscow promised future talks on the matter. Both sides feared that if either completed a system, it would disrupt the balance of power and possibly provoke a preemptive strike. Both also wanted to avoid a costly new addition to already strained military budgets. Furthermore, most scientists questioned the viability of any ABM program. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 ended any immediate chances for substantive talks.3 Once in office, Nixon proposed building the Safeguard System, an arrangement of possibly twelve sites with four designed specifically to protect the Minutemen missiles. While privately unenthusiastic about the ABM system, Nixon wanted a victory on this foreign policy issue to please his party's right wing and also to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Soviets. Hawkish Democrats like Richard Russell joined the team. Gore announced his opposition to the project early on, calling any deployment "a grave error." In hearings of the subcommittee on International Organization and Disarmament Affairs, Gore stated, "It is my serious conviction that the [ABM] program . . . would further endanger our security, it would make an armaments limitation agreement more difficult, if not impossible, to attain, and thus ultimately degrade our deterrent . . . [O]ur real security rests in stopping the nuclear armaments race, not promoting it."4 The Tennessean proved especially aggressive in the hearings that NBC and CBS taped for broadcast. During one exchange, a Defense Department witness, David Packard, produced several charts to support the administration's position . Gore jumped out of his chair and approached Packard, producing his own tables and placing them where the audience could see them. Then, he unceremoniously took the pointer from the surprised witness and proceeded to make his own presentation on how the United States already maintained a nuclear superiority over the Soviets.5 Gore also effectively criticized the ABM system outside the committee hearings. He told the audience of Face the Nation that Nixon hadcome "down squarely . . . with the industrial-military complex." He argued that deterrence depended on power and the ability to use it but that defensive...

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