House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, lampooned Vice President Al Gore Thursday for telling an interviewer that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet."
"If the Vice President created the Internet then I created the Interstate highway system," Armey said in a statement released by his office Thursday. "Both were begun during the Eisenhower Administration and I think Ike actually deserves a little credit here."
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," Gore said during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, according to a CNN transcript.
Gore, who leads for the Democratic presidential nomination, has made technology his trademark issue.
"Vice President Gore first popularized the term 'Information Superhighway' more than 20 years ago and stands on the shoulders of great thinkers who created the foundation for what is now the Internet," a Gore spokeswoman said.
In fact, both men have rewritten a bit of history.
The precursor to the Internet, a Defense Department project called ARPANet, was begun in 1969 under Richard Nixon's administration. That was seven years before Gore was first elected to the House of Representatives.
The Interstate Highway system was indeed begun when Eisenhower was president - and one of its prime architects was Gore's father, Sen. Albert Gore, Sr. D-Tenn.