Barry Leiner wrote about how Gore helped get the Internet started:

"The Internet Society hosts a monograph called called "A Brief History of the Internet." (See http://www.isoc.org/internet-history/brief.html) The authors include some of the designers of the essential components of how the Internet works today: Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolff. The paper notes these key milestones in Internet history

Note that these authors of (and participants in) Internet history state clearly that as early as 1988, then-Senator Gore became involved in the goal of building a national research network. We'll examine his role in more detail later."

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/799/708