Contributors

For years, TIME reporter KAREN TUMULTY suspected that the way to really get into Al Gore's head was to stop focusing on him--and shift your gaze to the women behind him. "We have heard so much about the men who have been role models for these candidates," Tumulty says. "But these women explain parts of [Gore] that you don't get any other way." Gore's mother, Pauline Gore, shaped her son's relentlessly left-lobe way of looking at the world. And his wife Tipper helped awaken his latent emotional side. "What really got me interested in doing this story was an offhand comment Tipper made in an interview I did with her three years ago," Tumulty says. "She said the discipline in [Gore's] thinking came from his mother, and it occurred to me that if you could understand that, you could understand a lot about Al Gore. It's really at the core of who he is."

When TAMALA M. EDWARDS first met 27-year-old Karenna Gore Schiff for lunch, she expected the Child of a Very Important Father. After all, this was a woman whose Senator father taught her to ride a bike on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. But to her surprise, Edwards says, Karenna has mastered the role of the girl next door. "She's very good at not seeming pompous while talking about her very abnormal upbringing," Edwards says. During the hours they spent together, Karenna was relaxed, personable--and remarkably tuned in to the day-to-day details of her father's campaign. More so than her mother, Edwards says, Karenna embraces the daily grind of the campaign trail. And to help tell her dad's story to TIME, Karenna offered Edwards a family exclusive--access to lengthy interviews she had conducted with her grandmother, Pauline Gore.

DIANA WALKER materialized half a dozen times to photograph the Gore campaign in action--and then disappeared. "When you want to be a fly on the wall, you don't want to wear out your welcome," she says. To capture the candidate at rest, away from the podiums and microphones, Walker uses quiet cameras and no lights. Then she sits and waits for moments of truth.

HARRY BENSON, the second half of TIME'S photographic tag team, visited the vacationing Vice President on Figure Eight Island, N.C. Benson had to bribe an airline clerk to get a scarce seat, but it was worthwhile. Benson, who has been photographing Presidents since Eisenhower, says the Gore family was unusually comfortable together. "I never saw as much affection with Jackie and Jack [Kennedy] as I saw with Tipper and Al."

ERIC CHASE ANDERSON may be called a political cartographer. That's how best to describe someone who wandered through Carthage, Tenn., sketching Al Gore's hometown and interviewing his boyhood friends. The result is, as he puts it, "a memoir in the shape of a map." It's part geography, part story--a concept he created two years ago when he drew a map for his family at Christmas. That one was a tribute to his stepmother's minivan. The gift was a big hit, and he's been mapping ever since.

ERIC POOLEY, our chief political correspondent, knew he needed quality time with Vice President Gore if he was to understand the roots of the image problems plaguing Gore's campaign. The only obstacle: Gore was doing just that--campaigning--at a tireless pace. At one point, Pooley flew to San Francisco just to talk to Gore on another plane en route to Miami. "I logged 7,000 miles for a half-hour interview," Pooley notes. He walked away with the realization that despite all the ink spilled on Gore, "the shorthand on him is actually very misleading."