As a basketball player, Bradley’s skill was to move without the ball. He let the flow of the game come to him. He was slower than other guys, and short for his position. But he knew where to be when the game was on the line, and used sharp elbows to get there. As it was then, so it is now. After twice shying away from running for president–in 1988 and 1992–Bradley, at 55, sees the game coming to him. He’ll never be must-see TV. He’s not a warm charmer, and he has a habit–born of resentment at being a “jock” at Princeton–of lecturing and sermonizing. In any other time and place, he’d be an impossible sell. But in a country tired of Clinton’s off-court antics, Bradley is methodically working his way toward an open shot.
In the NBA with the New York Knicks, Bradley learned to see the whole court at once, and wait patiently to exploit weak spots in the defense. He’s been quietly watching the travails of Vice President Al Gore. Back in Washington last week, Gore’s campaign was tearing itself apart on the front page of The New York Times, as two top media aides spouted venom at each other over past business dealings. But Bradley is beginning to needle the veep. He and Gore spent years in the Senate together, but Bradley gave a mordant, blank stare when asked about Gore’s legislative accomplishments. “I think he cared a lot about nuclear war, and missiles,” said Bradley dryly. The vice presidency is no place for accomplishment, he added. If anyone in the administration gets credit for the roaring economy, it’s Clinton, not Gore. “All credit–or blame–is at the top,” said Bradley. And last week he won the endorsement of perhaps Bill Clinton’s most nettlesome gadfly in the Democratic Party, Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.
On a West Coast trip last week, Bradley showed both the reach and limits of his game. No other leading white politician today can claim to have spent so much time in a predominantly black world. During his decade in the NBA he worked in Harlem in the summers; he has impeccable contacts and credentials in the black community and is proud of a campaign staff peopled at the highest levels with women and minorities. The crowd at the conference of minority journalists was primed for a roof-raising speech. Cornel West of Harvard introduced Bradley as “my brother, my comrade.” Then Bradley, donning drugstore reading glasses, standing motionless at the podium, took the air out of the cavernous hall with a lecture on the history of racism and the complexity of ethnic subcultures. He got nods of knowing assent, but he could have had a standing O.
But politics, Bradley knows, is a game of comparison. In comparison with Gore he could be considered a riveting speaker. And only in comparison with the veep could he label himself an “outsider.” In three winning Senate races he amassed a state-of-the-art fund-raising machine with tens of thousands of names. With his Princeton and NBA connections as a base, he reaches into deep pockets. Later this year his pro basketball allies will host a major event for him in Chicago. There are Princeton alums in every port of call, ready with contacts and money. His years on the Senate Finance Committee allowed him to meet CEOs who at least are willing to listen now. “The guys in Hollywood like him because he’s everything they’re not,” Leno said after the show. “He’s smart, decent and not flashy.”
When he quit the Senate, Bradley said he’d had enough of politics, but he began considering a Y2K run within months. He took two years to clear his head, learn about the world of high tech at Stanford and used lucrative speeches to replenish his family bank account. Now, while Gore struggles with the unwieldy apparatus of incumbency, Bradley is free to move without the ball. In Washington, Bradley’s many trips to Iowa and New Hampshire have gotten the most attention. But the real threat to Gore is in California, which Bradley has shrewdly cultivated for years. In the Senate he made it his business to immerse himself in California issues, and he recently made a 10-day swing through the state. He was back last week, squeezing the Leno gig between fund-raising stops.
Always a good ball handler, Bradley is trying to dribble left and right at the same time. He’s a defender of affirmative action, abortion rights and stiff new anti-handgun measures. He’s an opponent of the Clinton-Gore welfare-reform law. On his “poverty tour” last week, the president went to several places, including an Indian reservation in South Dakota, that Bradley has visited many times and written about. (“Glad you noticed that,” Bradley said.) Yet Bradley also supports experiments with school vouchers–anathema to teachers’ unions–and thinks of himself as a cautious friend to corporate America. Delighting Silicon Valley and Wall Street, Bradley said that he opposes any taxation of sales on the Internet–the fastest-growing sector of commerce. “We don’t yet know what the Internet is going to become,” he said. “So it doesn’t make sense to talk about taxing it.”
As they confront Bradley, the Gore team’s choice is to ignore him, or take him on and confirm what insiders already know: that he is a real threat. And Bradley is a tempting target. When he quit the Senate, he pronounced politics “broken.” But he is capable of the kind of sanctimony and hypocrisy that led to the breakdown he decried. He says he has a more “varied life experience” than Gore, but he’s not entirely the unassuming kid from small-town Missouri. His autobiography talks eloquently about his roots but neglects to mention that he attended prep school intermittently, too–in Florida, at Palm Beach Day School, where his father went every winter to soothe his arthritis. For years he blasted the pet project of the corn belt–tax subsidies for use of a corn-based fuel called ethanol–as a ripoff. But now that he wants votes in the Iowa caucuses, he’s suddenly discovered its virtue. He vows to put forward a plan for “near universal” health care, but didn’t take a leading role when the issue was hot in the Senate, in 1994. He decries the corrupting influence of money in politics, but traveled the country giving lucrative speeches to business groups.
But if Gore is going to make an issue of any of that, he had better start. Bradley is moving. After the Leno show, he hurried off to catch a plane for Idaho, where he was to be the guest of his old friend “Herbie”–as in Herbert Allen, one of the most powerful media moguls on earth. Every year Allen convenes a media conference that draws the top players in the digital-entertainment age. It’s prime territory for networking and fund-raising. “Herbie used to come to the Knicks games,” Bradley explained. “I’ve known him for 30 years.”
Bradley kept in touch with Allen and everyone else who could help him. The former senator calls himself as “workaholic,” and may be one of the most methodical men ever to run. A coach had told him to practice hard–because somewhere else, in some other gym, someone else might be practicing more. Bradley has been chasing that phantom ever since.
Now he’s playing one-on-one in the biggest contest in American life–and professes not to be worried if he loses. But he’s a student of timing and rhythm, and clearly thinks this is his moment. His wife, Ernestine, had a bout with breast cancer, and has recovered. Their only child, Theresa Anne, is grown, a 23-year-old student at NYU. A frugal banker’s son, Bradley is worth millions. “Having walked around it for so long, now that I’ve crossed the Rubicon I’m having a great time,” he said as he tossed his overnight bag back into the trunk of a car at the NBC studios in Burbank. Leno had asked him why he’d been called “Dollar Bill” in the pros. Because he’d gotten a big signing bonus, he said, and because he was too cheap to buy nice clothes. And one other reason: “When the money was on the line, I took the shot.” It’s on the line now, and Bradley wants the ball.
