Editing Gore Vidal (section)

===Political campaigns===
[[File:Gore Vidal for the People's Party.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|left|Vidal speaking for the [[People's Party (United States, 1971)|People's Party]] in 1972]]
Vidal began to drift towards the political left after he received his first paycheck, and realized how much money the government took in tax.<ref name="nationalsec">{{cite book |last1=Vidal |first1=Gore |title=The History of the National Security State |date=2014 |publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform |page=6}}</ref> He reasoned that if the government was taking so much money, then it should at least provide first-rate healthcare and education.<ref name="nationalsec"/>

As a public intellectual, Vidal was identified with the [[Modern liberalism in the United States|liberal]] politicians and the [[Progressivism in the United States|progressive]] social causes of the old Democratic Party.<ref name="The Nation profile">{{cite web |url=http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/gore_vidal |title=Gore Vidal |work=The Nation |access-date=January 22, 2009 |archive-date=January 16, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090116010329/http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/gore_vidal |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Ira Henry Freeman, [https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/vidal-campaign.html "Gore Vidal Conducts Campaign of Quips and Liberal Views"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160629121515/http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/vidal-campaign.html |date=June 29, 2016 }}, ''The New York Times'', September 15, 1960</ref>

In 1960, Vidal was the Democratic candidate for Congress for the [[New York's 29th congressional district|29th Congressional District]] of New York, a usually Republican district that included most of the [[Catskills]] and the western bank of the Hudson River, including [[Newburgh, New York|Newburgh]], but lost to the Republican candidate [[J. Ernest Wharton]], by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/1960election.pdf|title=Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 8, 1960|publisher=Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives|year=1960|page=31, item #29|access-date=August 4, 2012|archive-date=October 21, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111021081722/http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/1960election.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> Campaigning under the slogan of ''You'll get more with Gore'', Vidal received the most votes any Democratic candidate had received in the district in fifty years and outpolled John F. Kennedy (who lost the district with 38 percent of the vote).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://wwu.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/minimalist/index.html?appid=eeaf147abda34d578f0f75d133bf0d1d|title=1960 U.S. Presidential Election, Results by Congressional District|publisher=Western Washington University}}</ref> Among his supporters were [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] and [[Paul Newman]] and [[Joanne Woodward]], friends who spoke on his behalf.<ref>{{cite news |first=Ira Henry |last=Freeman |title=The Playwright, the Lawyer, and the Voters |newspaper=The New York Times |date=September 15, 1960 |page=20 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1960/09/15/archives/the-playwright-the-lawyer-and-the-voters-gore-vidal-conducts.html |access-date=July 23, 2018 |archive-date=July 23, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180723093455/https://www.nytimes.com/1960/09/15/archives/the-playwright-the-lawyer-and-the-voters-gore-vidal-conducts.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1982, he campaigned against [[Jerry Brown]], the incumbent Governor of California, in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate; Vidal forecast accurately that the opposing Republican candidate ([[Pete Wilson]]) would win [[1982 United States Senate election in California|the election]].<ref name="vidal_correx_july_2011">[https://web.archive.org/web/20120402190800/http://www.gorevidalnow.com/in-which-gore-vidal-corrects-his-wikipedia-page/ Archived from gorevidalnow.com], in which Gore Vidal corrects his Wikipedia page</ref> That foray into senatorial politics is the subject of the documentary film ''[[Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No]]'' (1983), directed by [[Gary Conklin]].

[[File:TimothyMcVeighPerryOKApr2195.jpg|thumb|In 2001, ''Vanity Fair'' published an article by Vidal on [[Timothy James McVeigh|Timothy McVeigh]]. The article attempts to understand why McVeigh perpetrated the 1995 [[Oklahoma City bombing]].]]
In a 2001 article, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh", Gore undertook to discover why domestic terrorist [[Timothy McVeigh]] perpetrated the [[Oklahoma City bombing]] in 1995. He concluded that McVeigh (a politically disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of the [[Gulf War|First Iraq War]], 1990–91) had destroyed the [[Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building]] as an act of revenge for the FBI's [[Waco massacre]] (1993) at the [[Branch Davidian]] Compound in Texas, believing that the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same manner that he believed that the U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis. In concluding the ''[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'' article, Vidal refers to McVeigh as an "unlikely sole mover", and theorizes that foreign/domestic conspiracies could have been involved.<ref>Gore Vidal, [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2001/09/mcveigh200109?printable=true&currentPage=all "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100530073906/http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2001/09/mcveigh200109?printable=true&currentPage=all |date=May 30, 2010 }}. ''Vanity Fair'', September 2001.</ref>

Vidal was very much against any kind of [[military intervention]] in the world.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theconversation.com/reflections-on-the-life-and-work-of-gore-vidal-8583|title=Reflections on the life and work of Gore Vidal|first=Fron|last=Jackson-Webb|website=The Conversation|date=August 2012 |access-date=May 6, 2019|archive-date=May 6, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190506081608/http://theconversation.com/reflections-on-the-life-and-work-of-gore-vidal-8583|url-status=live}}</ref> In ''Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta'' (2002), Vidal drew parallels about how the United States enters wars and said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt provoked [[Imperial Japan]] to attack the U.S. to justify the American entry to the [[Second World War]] (1939–45). He contended that Roosevelt had [[Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory|advance knowledge]] of the dawn-raid [[attack on Pearl Harbor]] (December 7, 1941).<ref>Gore Vidal, "Three Lies to Rule By" and "Japanese Intentions in the Second World War", from ''Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta'', New York, 2002, {{ISBN|1-56025-502-1}}</ref> In the documentary [[Why We Fight (2005 film)|''Why We Fight'']] (2005), Vidal said that, during the final months of the war, the Japanese had tried to surrender: "They were trying to surrender all that summer, but [[Harry Truman|Truman]] wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs ... To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change the [[balance of power (international relations)|balance of power]] in the world. To declare war on [[communism]]. Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.say2.org/why-we-fight/09.htm |title=Why We Fight (9 of 48) |publisher=Say2.org (Series of Subtitles for Documentary Video) |access-date=November 7, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728000320/http://www.say2.org/why-we-fight/09.htm |archive-date=July 28, 2011}}</ref>