Al Gore got a bad wrap, and I’ll tell you why. Not only was he deliberately mis-quoted about his role in the development of the Internet, but the importance of his role was totally downplayed.

Gore sponsored the legislation that funded the extension of Internet access to almost every undergraduate in a 4 year college or university in the early 1990s. The result was that english majors, artists, psych majors, etc, people who had never had access to the net before, had a chance to use it. Combined with HTML, HTTP & Mosaic, this made the experience richer for all participants, and demostrated that the medium had relevance beyond its traditional constituency of computer scientists, physicists and mathemeticians.

If he runs again, I am sure his opponents will try and blame the whole dot.com hangover on him.