But high stakes–and higher ambition–lured him out. In 1983, he proposed a “fair tax,” a sweeping plan to lower and simplify tax rates. He published a book on it. He touted it as he campaigned, successfully, for re-election in 1984. He was going to run for president someday, maybe in 1988, and the “fair tax” would be his calling card. By 1986, it was time to pass a bill. That meant cultivating Democrats in the House. And lo and behold, Bradley was a gym rat again, suddenly available on the House court for five-on-five, HORSE, or one-on-one. The intel he picked up was crucial to his Senate colleagues. “None of us knew all the House guys, and Bill told us how to handle ’em,” said Robert Packwood, the Finance Committee chairman at the time. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan chuckles at the memory. “How did Bill do it? Why, he played basketball!”
He did what he had to do to win, which for Bradley–painfully–meant pretending to be one of the guys. Now he is playing again, on a far bigger court, in the biggest pickup game on the planet. This week, in his boyhood home of Crystal City, Mo., he formally launches his campaign for the presidency. The odds are long. He’s far behind Al Gore in nationwide polls of Democrats. If actor Warren Beatty runs, he could complicate Bradley’s bid to attract what’s left of the party’s left. Meanwhile, the vice president is inching forward in the test matchups against George W. Bush, a trend that could undercut Bradley’s chief (though unstated) argument: that Gore is simply too weak to put up against the governor of Texas.
Still, Bradley has the money and moxie to turn the fight for the Democratic nomination into a steel-cage death match. Bradley has assiduously worked the money crowd in Manhattan and Silicon Valley, and has the backing of prominent Hollywood and NBA stars. He may soon have as much cash on hand as the vice president does. More important, he’s offering a gauzy but uplifting call to nobility in politics, pledging to lead fellow baby boomers in a quest for racial harmony in a more civil society. Bradley is no saint, but he’s an old-fashioned kind, straight out of Boys’ Life: clean-living, level-headed, perfectly credentialed. His crowds don’t whoop it up, but they seem relieved to find a Democrat who could keep the White House but cleanse it after Bill Clinton. Gore may be especially vulnerable in New Hampshire, where obstreperous voters love an upset. In a new poll there (by Franklin Pierce College and WNDS-TV) Bradley trails Gore by just seven points.
Despite a lifetime lived literally in the arena, Bradley remains an elusive, contradictory figure. He is at ease with himself but not his surroundings, coldly judgmental one minute, tender to the edge of tears the next. He is an outsider by nature but determined to be a force at the center of human affairs. He’ll take on long odds–or do a 6'5" vanishing act. Ask him for a simple description of himself–for, say, an aspect of his character that people don’t know–and he all but hisses. “It’s too complicated,” he says with a dismissive wave.
Not really. To understand Bill Bradley, you need to know that he’s a shy, studious man–the only child of doting, older parents–and that he’s been a hero in insanely public realms: basketball and politics. From early adolescence until nearly 35, Bradley was consumed–and formed–by hoops: a game, he mordantly observes, in which grown men play in short pants (next story). From 1977 on, politics has been his calling, the stage on which he has displayed the character–“the values of the game”–forged on the court. His life in the politics thus far provides clues to the kind of leader is, and the kind of president he’d be.
He would, for one, not bother trying to charm the powers that be. Bradley has a Whitmanesque love of the average Joe, a romantic view reinforced by thousands of encounters in what he proudly calls his “life on the run.” He also loves to chat up CEOs, especially Princeton grads. But he can’t stand the Beltway swells, whom he zings with cold stares and nasty, muttered asides. Ten years in the NBA, and 18 in the Senate cloakroom, distilled his native Missouri wit into sulfuric Jersey acid. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff he’d say about other senators behind their back,” said one of his few close friends in the Senate. Nor would Bradley conceal his contempt for an ill-prepared or mentally underpowered colleague. The “media” was, for the most part, beneath contempt. “I’d say, ‘Bill, this isn’t the NBA locker room. You gotta be respectful to these guys’,” said his friend. “He’d just laugh.”
Nevertheless, Bradley was highly respected because he worked so hard and learned so much. Scouting for new staff, he asked exhaustive questions. “He filled up two legal pads with notes,” recalls Ralph Neas, now a civil-rights attorney. To learn more, Bradley befriended Senate sages, a role of protege he’d practiced as a “coachable” player. A true intellectual, he loved the challenge of unraveling complex power structures, and then learning how to manipulate them. Bradley won a seat on the Finance Committee, and set about decoding the tax code. Soon enough, he’d done it. “No one knew the code and all the players as well as he did,” said Lawrence O’Donnell, former staff director of the committee. “That was his power.”
Bradley wasn’t a loner, exactly, but he was never part of a gang. He had a working wife and a young daughter, and avoided the Washington nighttime social circuit like the plague. “He wasn’t at all standoffish,” said former senator Wendell Ford. “He just wasn’t somebody you went out to dinner with.” On roll calls, Bradley never brought a cadre, only his own vote. But that was enough. “You didn’t want him against you,” recalled Ford, who chaired the Rules Committee. “If he was against you, that was a problem.”
Smart, disciplined, proud, Bradley thinks of himself as apart from–and above–politics as usual. He’s a proponent of campaign-finance reform, and derides candidates who rely on polling to decide what to say–or not say. But, in the Senate, he was a champion fund-raiser and poll junkie. He set records for money-raising in his 1990 race–which he almost lost–and spent three times more money on polling in that campaign than any other Senate candidate nationwide. The polling couldn’t tell him whether to support or oppose the New Jersey governor’s controversial tax increase. Bradley kept cavalierly silent. It almost cost him his career.
Nor is Bradley above the classic maneuver of politics: the flip-flop. In 1992, he voted to experiment with school vouchers. Now he says they violate the separation of church and state. Then there’s ethanol, a gasoline additive. Expensive and polluting, the fuel is made from corn and is therefore an elixir of life to debt-ridden farmers. For years Bradley was the leading enemy of ethanol in the Senate. But after communing with Iowa farmers, he declared a newfound love of the stuff. Ethanol was bad for New Jersey, he explained, but now he has a broader view. “For farmers in the Midwest,” he says, “ethanol makes sense.” Also for candidates in Iowa.
Less dramatic, but more fundamental, was Bradley’s shift on taxes. In 1993, Clinton proposed his own tax bill. Most policy experts agreed that it would gut Bradley’s reform by raising rates, adding loopholes and legitimizing, once again, the notion of using the tax code for social engineering. Though he fretted aloud, Bradley was the good soldier, handling the crucial behind-the-scenes work. “Without him, we wouldn’t have had a chance,” says O’Donnell. Imperfect though it was, Bradley says, the legislation was worth passing for its $500 billion in deficit reduction. “In politics, nothing’s perfect,” he says.
In fact, for all his perfectionist hauteur, there is something else to know about Bill Bradley: he loves to win, and is used to it. He’s been a champion since he was 14. Now he’s in a contest with uncongenial rules. The Democrats’ nominating guidelines give extra clout to elected officials, most of whom support Gore. The rules of American society favor candidates who flaunt their emotions and willingly surrender every shred of privacy. Bradley, as ambitious as he is, has never reconciled himself to being so visible. But if he wants to win, he has to tell us who he really is, and not be the least bit shy about it.
Doug Berman, Phil Jackson, Gina Glantz The candidate may be diffident, but he has confidants, including a basketball coach and two top campaign aides running the show from West Orange, N.J.
KEYS TO VICTORY 1 Excite the liberal grass roots: he’s wowing unions, wooing minorities and attacking the role of big money in politics. 2 Outraise Gore: he may have more money to spend than the vice president. 3 Win early: if he doesn’t take New Hampshire, it’s all over. 4 Keep expectations low: Democratic primary voters love an underdog. Will he peak too soon?
HIS LIFE Youth Born July 28, 1943, in Crystal City, Mo.; straight-A student and star athlete; 75 offers for athletic scholarships. College Princeton; member of 1964 gold-medal-winning Olympic basketball team; 1965 College Player of the Year; drafted by NBA, but took Rhodes scholarship instead. NBA Played forward for the N.Y. Knicks from 1967 to 1977, two-time champs. Politics Elected as U.S. senator from New Jersey in 1978, served three terms, passed up 1992 presidential campaign.
SUPPORTERS Harrison Ford, Michael Jordan, Michael Eisner, Paul Volcker, Barry Diller Hollywood types and a former Fed chairman. Jordan gave money but has not stumped for him yet.
