FOR once it was the absence of an affair that caused the scandal. As the US agonised last week over the surprise announcement that former vice-president Al Gore, 62, and Tipper, 61, were separating after 40 years of marriage, sorrow and regret were magnified by the seeming lack of anyone to blame.
The collapse of one of the outwardly most enviable political marriages caused a startling outburst of national concern about the permanence of love, the failure of family and the unforeseen challenges of longer human lives.
Then there is the question of that $US9 million ($10.9m) mansion, bought by the Gores only weeks before their break-up.
It all added up to a marital mystery that had even the nosiest internet scandal merchants flummoxed.
How on earth did one of Washington’s most visible couples – famed for their public displays of affection and co-authors of a book called Joined at the Heart – fall out of love without anyone noticing?
It was not just the expressions of shock from friends and Gore’s Democratic colleagues; nor the lack of any gossipy prelude hinting at strife between the former high-school sweethearts.
What really hit home for the baby-boom generation, wearied by half a century of divorces and hoping beyond hope for a companionable old age, was the realisation that the symbolic torch of modern marital example — at least in its liberal Democratic incarnation — had been passed from the Gores to none other than Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Who could have guessed, as the Clinton presidency subsided in a sordid saga of semen-stained dresses and unsmoked cigars a decade ago, that Bill ‘n’ Hill would one day outlast Al and Tipper?
Yet go down to the Cafe Milano in Georgetown, northwest Washington, tonight and it will not be the Gores who are holding hands over a candlelit dinner. It is the Clintons who are often spotted there a deux.
Several commentators noted last week that the bleak announcement by the Gores did not preclude future revelations about affairs. But Americans were still facing the unpalatable possibility that perhaps, after four decades, the Gores were simply sick of each other.
“The truth is we almost hope there’s an affair involved,” noted Andrew Cherlin, a columnist on The Washington Post, one of an army of sociologists wheeled out by the media to explain the inexplicable.
He wearily concluded: “It’s more threatening to us if we see a couple who we thought were happy just drift apart . . . some of us will worry what our own marriages will be like later in life.”
The one piece of real information that has so far emerged has merely clouded matters further. Earlier this year the Gores were reported to have bought a six-bedroom home with a view of the Pacific in Montecito, California.
Was this advanced planning for separation or the cause of a family dispute? The house has nine bathrooms and a pool and is close to the home of Oprah Winfrey — which may prove convenient should either of the Gores choose to put the US out of its misery and explain how their once inspirational love
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