Democratic Convention: The Women Who Made Al Gore

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Then, on April Fool's Day 1987, Al sprang another surprise on Tipper. He was thinking of running for President. And he was giving himself nine days to make a decision. "Shock therapy," she told him. "You continue to do it to me."

With Al's announcement, she canceled the rest of her book tour and once again threw herself into his campaign--except this time she was an issue. Tipper knew what her husband's advisers were telling him: "Please rein her in. This is killing your campaign." There was the time in Iowa that only one or two people showed up at a coffee for her. "The organizers told me they just couldn't get anyone to attend because everyone thought I was for censorship," she recalled. In the end, she was probably the least of that campaign's problems. "I learned how much I still needed to learn," she says now.

Failure is hard to take, especially the first time, but the lesson that would come a year later was even harder. It would finally force Al to confront what was missing in his soul, his life and his marriage, as well as the toll his career was taking on the people he loved most. It would change him and them.

On April 3, 1989, Tipper and Al were crossing the street in Baltimore, Md., on opening day of baseball season when six-year-old Albert suddenly bolted from his father's hand and was hit by a car. Their youngest child flew 30 ft. and slid along the pavement 20 more. "I ran to his side and held him and called his name, but he was motionless, limp and still, without breath or pulse," his father wrote. "His eyes were open with the nothingness stare of death, and we prayed, the two of us, there in the gutter, with only my voice." Two nurses happened upon the scene and treated the boy until an ambulance arrived. For the next month, Al and Tipper stayed by his side at Johns Hopkins. For many months after, Gore wrote, "our lives were consumed with the struggle to restore his body and spirit."

The Senate went on without him. Tipper canceled her speaking engagements and got rid of her household help, because it was suddenly her priority to clean every toilet and drive every car pool. "We both realized what was really important, and it was not to give one more speech," Tipper says. "I just decided to refocus completely on the family. Al went through the same realization. The demands of his job were never going to stop."

In the past, Al had always approached his schedule with the best of intentions and, on Sundays, made sure his flight back to Washington would get him there in time to slide into the pew next to his family at church. But Karenna recalls that other family commitments often "ended up on the cutting-room floor"--until little Albert's accident. "Fanatical parental attendance at everything," Karenna laughs. "Sometimes I was saying, 'No one else's parents will be there. It's a scrimmage!' And they were still like, 'I'll be there!'" This fanaticism about family has persisted until today when, in the middle of a presidential campaign, Albert's football banquet is cemented into the schedule months in advance.

Time.com

Democratic Convention: The Women Who Made Al Gore

Pauline raised a tough, pragmatic politician, but it took a life-altering family crisis to make Al see how much he had to learn from Tipper