But in life–and in a presidential campaign–you can’t be candid at your own convenience. Late last week in California, Bradley had an episode after attending the kind of event–a fund-raiser–that could make any candidate ill. He had forgotten to take his heart pills the night before, and he felt weak. When the discomfort didn’t go away by the next afternoon, he was forced to drop off the campaign trail. Aides said his regular heartbeat resumed while he was on his way to see a cardiologist. After a night’s rest at a friend’s home (they watched TV doctors discussing his heart), Bradley was off to Florida to carry on.

In politics, it’s often less important what you reveal than how you reveal it. As he hit the campaign trail again Bradley faced new questions–not about cardiology, but candor. He and his aides insisted that they were planning to release a doctor’s letter summarizing the state of his health at the start of this very week. But as events unfolded, the disclosure looked rather less than voluntary. If Bradley is running what he calls a “different kind of campaign”–a testament to his frankness–why did it take a dash to the hospital to unearth a condition that he and his physicians view as no big deal?

Health always matters in politics. Thomas Eagleton was forced off the Democratic ticket in 1972 by disclosure of his treatment for depression. The late Paul Tsongas in 1992 said he’d conquered cancer, but hadn’t, and it later became clear that he would have been too ill to serve.

In this campaign, the spirit of medical revelation is approaching the proctological–perhaps inevitable in a field full of aging baby boomers. Gov. George W. Bush has distributed a glowing medical report. Sen. John McCain released 1,500 pages of documents. Vice President Al Gore, NEWSWEEK has learned, will release his medical file this week. “He’s healthy as an ox,” crowed one insider.

There’s no doubt Bradley wanted to manage the disclosure. The idea was to wait for the least vulnerable moment–being ahead in the polls in New Hampshire is about as good as it gets–and to talk about his condition in the context of his overall excellent health. He didn’t mention his heart in the 1997 “Afterword” to his often deeply personal book, “Time Present, Time Past.” He didn’t talk about it when he launched his bid as a long shot a year ago. News organizations asked months ago for his medical records, but he had a full physical–necessary to complete the record–just two weeks ago.

Rather than look like they were trying to bury the story over Christmas, the Bradleyites had planned to release the results early this week and hoped other events would lead the media to quickly move on. Bradley and McCain are scheduled to conduct a televised “town hall” meeting in New Hampshire on campaign-finance reform. Bradley follows that with two rare confrontations with Gore, one on ABC’s “Nightline,” another on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

So even when the new problems began, Bradley struggled to stick with the script. He called his communications director, his doctor in New York and a cardiologist he knew in Palo Alto, Calif. They agreed that he’d soldier on, and the cardiologist would stand by to give treatment if necessary. In the meantime, the campaign would prepare to rush out a letter from the New York doctor, testifying to Bradley’s excellent overall health. The letter was dated the same day that Bradley fell ill. Just a coincidence, campaign officials said.

At a press conference before flying to Florida, Bradley seemed tired. He seemed more embarrassed than ill. Bradley waxed on a little too eloquently about his devotion to the Stairmaster. He tried to tell a joke (“I was thinking of folding my arms over my chest and falling backwards,” he told one writer), but it didn’t quite work. He had wanted to talk about this on Monday, he told the reporters, “but my heart decided to reveal it on Friday.” His condition was “just a nuisance,” he said, but he somehow had made it seem a little more than that.