Bill Bradley, the Rhodes scholar, the basketball star, the Olympian and the senator, had never really lost anything before.
For once in his storybook life, Bradley’s seemingly innate understanding of timing, place and hard work veered far off course. The thesis of his insurgent bid for the presidency–“the radical premise that you can tell people what you believe and win”–might have worked had Bradley managed to make voters view those beliefs as concrete, passion-inspiring or most of all as needed change.
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On Thursday, Bradley is set to make official what’s been obvious for some time. At 10 a.m. CST, Bradley, speaking from West Orange, N.J., is expected to drop out of the Democratic presidential race and endorse Vice President Al Gore, who beat him in every contest they had.
Faced with a vice president whose administration had presided over the longest economic expansion in history, Bradley needed to starkly distinguish himself from his opponent, but during Bradley’s more than yearlong quest, he hesitated far too long to criticize Gore. When he finally did, his words were vague and gentle and delivered without force. Meanwhile, Gore had no trouble slamming Bradley, adopting parts of his platform and, by the end, ignoring him.
Bradley’s strategy also was ill-conceived. He invested far too much time campaigning in states he should have known he couldn’t win, and in the process he sacrificed contests that mattered more and where he stood a chance of winning. Bradley, who all his life had found success when he made choices that surprised people, appeared to set aside the words of advisers and insist on doing things his own way.
As a political leader, Bradley’s sometimes-baffling reserve never let some voters see him in three dimensions. His soaring, professorial rhetoric left others alienated.
By the time Super Tuesday arrived, all of those factors had combined to leave most Democratic voters discounting him. “He ain’t going to win so why vote for him,” Missourian Steven Markus, who had considered backing state native Bradley, said last weekend. “I don’t want to waste my vote.”
If Bradley won anything throughout the primaries, it was the Adlai Stevenson II award. He had successfully wooed the vote of the educated and the rich, the elite of his party, but to paraphrase a famous Stevenson line, unfortunately Bradley needed a majority.
In the Republican presidential race, meanwhile, John McCain planned to make “a major announcement regarding the campaign” at 11 a.m. CST Thursday, a McCain aide said late Thursday. It was unclear whether the Arizona senator would drop out of the race completely or let the campaign go dormant
Fifteen months ago, when Bradley started his bid for the White House, one of his best commodities was his biography. His classic American tale–a rise from humble roots to the halls of Washington– had natural appeal, but he rarely used it.
While Bradley often told the crowds about his small-town upbringing and simple home, he seldom offered his audiences many thrills from his days playing for the New York Knicks. Either he was too modest or too presumptuous and assumed everyone knew his story.
For an electorate with a short memory, the assumption was probably a stretch, and though he often brought supertall former teammates like Dave DeBusschere with him to campaign stops, how many in the crowds knew who DeBusschere was?
More important than what Bradley didn’t tell voters about himself was what he didn’t tell them about his opponent. Last fall, as Gore struggled with a bloated campaign that was trying to remake its image, Bradley left him alone. Instead, he professed a belief in a “different kind of politics” that addressed issues like health care for the uninsured, child poverty and gun control, not one that was about “1,000 attacks and 1,000 promises.”
So Bradley called himself an insurgent but, as an insurgent, he could not simply favor something, he also had to be against something.
Eventually, in January, Bradley tried to attack. One day he hit Gore on farm policy. The next day, it was tobacco. Another day, it was abortion. But if Bradley wanted to make the charges stick, he needed to hit Gore on his most vulnerable spot as part of the Clinton administration: trust.
Bradley could never really bring himself to do it.
Last Thursday, just days before the do-or-die national contests, Bradley walked into a room of reporters traveling with him and said he had a comment to make. Accustomed to days without a comment from Bradley, the reporters grabbed notebooks. One reporter asked about a news report he had just heard: What did Bradley think of the conviction that day of Maria Hsia, the veteran Democratic fundraiser who was linked to Gore’s controversial appearance at a Buddhist temple?
Tossed the chance to talk about Gore’s 1996 campaign finance scandal, Bradley didn’t respond to the question.
Instead, he went on with his planned remark: A less-than-five-minute comment opposing a new measure some South Carolina officials were considering to keep the Confederate flag flying. Then Bradley left the room. Gore and Bradley had picked the same stance on the flag question, and Bradley’s new remarks made little, if any, news.
A few days later, Bradley’s campaign staff suggested that Bradley was finally just about to get tough on Gore over the fundraising scandal. When Bradley actually spoke about it, his words were mild, to say the least: “I still think 1996 can be a problem for him in the fall.”
He would go no further.
John Snowdon, a 60-year-old from Greenwich Village, had enthusiastically supported Bradley for months. By last weekend, he was openly disgusted with the candidate. “He blew it,” said Snowdon. “He has allowed himself to be destroyed by Al Gore, when he should have destroyed Al Gore on the first day out. You’ve got to take every opportunity to say what needs to be said. You can’t stand there like a big sheep.”
Bradley said it was more important to lay out your own vision than it was to attack your opponent’s record, but his vision, too, seemed blurry sometimes. It was so high-minded, so expansive, so nuanced that a friend, actor Harvey Keitel, introduced him to crowds as a “poet politician.”
Bradley spoke of a “new kind of politics,” and asked his audiences, “What is your dream?” He called for “an open embracing of an idealism that carries us to higher ground” and “a cold mountain stream to run through Washington.”
The newspaper editorial boards and his own aides, many young and from his years in the Senate or his early campaigns, seemed mesmerized by him. For many others, Bradley could not stir passion or spark electricity. He seemed uncomfortable with all the cheering when he walked in and would often raise his hands to quiet the room or awkwardly call out: “OK, OK, OK!”
Meanwhile, Gore, who was remaking himself, had no problem attacking. He attacked Bradley’s health-care plan, saying it would hurt minorities. At the same time, he adopted some of Bradley’s positions. The final debate between Bradley and Gore evolved into a “Me Too” fest. Repaired and improved, Gore came out strengthened.
Bradley’s campaign also made some peculiar strategic choices, small and large. In Iowa, a meant-to-be-funny poster for Bradley portrayed him as the guy “you always hated” in high school–an athlete and scholar. But why would anyone actually elect the school nerd as president of the United States?
And the campaign slogan–“It Can Happen”–seemed passive and uncertain, like the campaign itself.
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Bradley’s choice to recite a more than half-hour foreign policy address in the final four days before Super Tuesday seemed inconceivably odd, almost like acceptance of defeat. The thesislike prose received little national attention, and managed to sedate a hall full of otherwise energetic college students in Providence, R.I.
Strategically, the campaign’s decisive moment came at the end of January, with 2000’s first contests in the nation. Trailing badly in Iowa polls, but far closer in New Hampshire’s, Bradley’s campaign went to Iowa.
The campaign spent almost a week there; Bradley said he was there because the state’s voters deserved his respect. Perhaps that was meant as a hit on Gore, who abandoned the same contest in 1988, but it was so subtle, most people wouldn’t have recognized it as such.
Along the trail, reports emerged about Bradley’s irregular heartbeat condition, weakening his image at a crucial time. When Bradley surprised no one by losing the Iowa caucuses badly, there was only a week left to campaign full-time in New Hampshire.
In New Hampshire, Bradley lost by 4 percentage points. It would be his closest race of the season. The same state launched McCain’s popularity, and he had skipped Iowa to devote himself to New Hampshire. If Bradley had taken the time to shake 7,000 more hands in New Hampshire, the entire script might be different.
A few weeks later, Bradley made another confusing choice. He went to Washington state for days and days, even though the voting there was non-binding. In spite of New York and California supporters complaining that he needed to spend more time in their states, Bradley stuck it out in Seattle, thinking Washington state’s liberal electorate could pump new, psychological life into his bid.
Bradley lost there too, and then had just a week to search for votes in 16 states. He focused on New England–the region where he expected to do the best–but it was too late.
“I don’t know what it is,” said Richard Randazzo, a music teacher at Portland High School in Maine. “Maybe people aren’t ready for his message yet.”
Walking in a brisk wind in New York on Saturday morning, Bradley’s wife, Ernestine, said her husband wouldn’t change his “new politics” way, even if it meant defeat. “That is not what Bill is,” she said. “This is, of course, the risk that he’s taking.”
For once, perhaps for the only time in his life, it wasn’t enough just to be Bill Bradley.