Gore Says U.S. Needs ‘Second Breath of Life’ : Running mate: Senator accepts vice presidential nomination in a speech that refers to a new generation and to details of his personal life.

With an intensely personal evocation of an America “waiting for us to give it a second breath of life,” Tennessee Sen. Al Gore accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president Thursday night and set off on a four-month journey to convince voters of his contention that a new generation of leaders can bind the nation’s wounds.

Gore, 44, formally joined the ticket eight days after he was offered the job by Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton. He became a principal in the youngest major-party ticket in history four years after he unsuccessfully sought the presidency for himself and a year after he ruled out a return effort in 1992.

Taking the podium at Madison Square Garden between his own nomination and Clinton’s much-anticipated acceptance speech, Gore introduced himself to an electorate to whom he is still something of a mystery, with an address weighted with autobiography.

Recounting a story that has become familiar in recent days, Gore cast the critical injury of his son in 1989 as a turning point in his life and sought to extend it as metaphor for the country’s troubles.

As his father watched, Albert III, now 9, was struck by a car in Baltimore and tossed 30 feet into the air, skidding another 20 feet before he came to rest in a street gutter. Gore told how he reached the boy, who was not breathing, and held him and prayed.

“When you’ve seen your reflection in the empty stare of a boy waiting for a second breath of life, you realize we weren’t put here on Earth to look out for our needs alone. We’re part of something larger than ourselves,” Gore said in remarks prepared for delivery.

“My friends, if you look up for a moment from the rush of your daily lives, you will hear the quiet voices of your country crying out for help. You will see your reflection in the weary eyes of those who are losing hope in America. And you will see that our democracy is lying there in the gutter, waiting for us to give it a second breath of life.”

Watching as Gore accepted the nomination was his son, who recovered after a long hospitalization. Also in the packed arena were his parents, former U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Sr. and Pauline Gore; the younger Gore’s wife, Tipper, and their three daughters, Karenna, 20, Kristin, 18, and Sarah, 13.

Gore’s speech was light on specifics and heavy on the slashing criticism that a vice presidential nominee is expected to deliver, with the Tennessee senator defending Clinton and arguing that the Bush Administration has forsaken its right to a second term by ignoring the problems of everyday Americans.

“It is time for them to go,” Gore said eight times during the speech, after a caustic litany of barbs.

He also made a hearty play for the supporters of Texas businessman Ross Perot, whose announcement of non-candidacy hit the political powers here like a thunderclap.

“Don’t give up on your fight for change,” he told Perot’s supporters around the country. “The time has come for all Americans to be part of the healing.”

Thematically, Gore’s speech struck the notes that Clinton has tried to drive home throughout his campaign--that the Democratic Party can serve as an agent for change and that the disparate elements of the American melting pot had better work together to achieve it.

“We must now accept the obligation of proving that freedom from prejudice is the heart and soul of community,” he said, and he echoed the words of Rodney G. King, the Los Angeles police beating victim, “that, yes, we can get along.”

The nomination closed a roller-coaster period for Gore, who accepted the vice presidential bid July 8 in a late-night telephone conversation that originated in the east conference room of the governor’s mansion in Little Rock.

Clinton said the next morning, in an announcement under a blazing sun on the mansion grounds, that he had chosen Gore because he is “a leader of great strength, integrity and stature.”

The Tennessean in some ways duplicates Clinton’s strengths--he is popular in the South, and his image is meant to reinforce the notion of generational change. Gore has sought to compare the 1992 ticket to the one led by John F. Kennedy in 1960--on Thursday night, he lifted Kennedy’s slogan and asserted that the Democrats provided “a new generation of leadership.”

Gore also displayed his finesse at generational rhetoric with a joking reference to Clinton’s nickname in the first line of his speech: “I’ve been dreaming of this moment since I was a kid growing up in Tennessee,” he said, “that one day, I’d have the chance to come here to Madison Square Garden and be the warm-up act for Elvis.”

Chief among the attributes that attracted Clinton to him was Gore’s reputation as a champion of the environment, and that issue was prominently emphasized in the vice presidential nominee’s speech.

“The task of saving the Earth’s environment must and will become the central organizing principle of the post-Cold War world,” declared Gore, who headed the U.S. Senate delegation to last month’s global environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro.