Al and Tipper Gore: Another one bites the dust

“Et tu, Al and Tipper?” said Belinda Luscombe in Time.com. One of the most apparently happy couples in public life—Al and Tipper Gore—stunned Washington last week by announcing they’re separating. “What on earth happened? After four decades, having reared four children, nursed their son through a terrifying car accident, endured four presidential campaigns,” and made it through the really hard part—now they call it quits? It’s definitely perplexing, said Alyssa Rosenberg in Washingtonian.com. Having fallen in love in high school, then three decades later indulged in that famous long smooch at the 2000 Democratic convention, the Gores had a marriage that seemed “solidly of another era.” Throughout the Clinton years, they were “a refuge from the tumult and confusion of the First Couple’s troubled union.” There’s no indication of betrayal or bad behavior, but this news is still awfully depressing.

It’s time to grow up, said Michelle Cottle in The New Republic Online. Sure, Al and Tipper were “Mom and Dad: reliable, comforting, goofy, and totally icky to watch mack in public.” And yes, the country craves a public marriage that genuinely works. But “an awful lot of baggage can pile up over 40 years,” and while that’s “an impressive chunk of time to spend together, it is not the lifetime it once was.” Al is 62, Tipper, 61—they may have another two or three decades to go. And as quintessential baby boomers, they “don’t see 60 as the time to kick back and settle into the big fade.” Al is now entirely dedicated to his messianic mission to save Planet Earth from global warming, a mission Tipper doesn’t share, which may be one reason they grew apart. By striking out on their own, the Gores are exchanging one romantic “fairy tale” for another, embracing the promise of “new beginnings.”

It sure looks like a dead end to me, said Ellen McCarthy in The Washington Post. Everyone knows marriage is hard, but you’d think that by the time you hit the four-decade mark you’d be in the winner’s circle. That’s why this story “doesn’t just make us sad. It makes us scared.” We see a couple with all the “necessary ingredients—romance, good morals, mutual respect, and a healthy family”—and still it all “crumbled in the end.” Worse, we don’t know what went wrong. So we can’t tell ourselves the same won’t happen to us. “It won’t, will it?”

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