XIRA, Iowa - Days after a debate in which he described Vice President Al Gore as trapped in the ''Washington bunker,' Bill Bradley seized on a new metaphor for his view that Gore tends to think small thoughts about big problems.
The issue of the day was education.
The metaphor: A box.
''I think he views education as if it were in a box, where there are particular programs in a box that's called education,'' Bradley told an audience at an elementary school here.
The former New Jersey senator, campqaigning in the hilly farmland of western Iowa, also chastised Gore for proposing more new spending for the Pentagon than for schools.
The alternative, Bradley said, is to ''talk about education in the fabric of our lives,'' an issue linked to others, like health care and gun control.
''Education is the very essence of life,'' Bradley added later in a speech to students at Atlantic High School. ''Education is the backbone of everything we do.''
In a pine-green bus, Bradley traveled yesterday through the state that will host the Jan. 24 caucus that will be the first true test of the 2000 Democratic presidential campaign.
Late yesterday, he asked Democrats at the community college in Boone to help him ''against the Gore-istas.''
He also blasted President Clinton, telling a questioner that he voted for the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act only because Clinton promised to follow up with safety-net legislation for family farmers. ''I took his word, which, you know, isn't always the best thing to do,'' Bradley said.
Today, he planned to attack Gore's record on tobacco, aides said. Spokesman Eric Hauser dismissed the ''Gore-istas'' comment as not negative, but ''tongue-in-cheek and whimsical.''
While Bradley has surged in parts of the Northeast, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, he is more of an underdog here. But since the Democratic primary race focused anew on Iowa with a debate on Saturday, Gore has begun to cast Bradley as out of his element and unfamiliar with this agrarian state.
That tactic continued yesterday. When Bradley arrived at the high school in Atlantic, Iowa, yesterday afternoon, his campaign was greeted by ''Corn Man,'' a Gore volunteer dressed as a yellow-and-green husk of corn. The volunteer distributed handouts questioning Bradley's understanding of farm policy, highlighting his Senate votes opposing emergency flood relief for farmers, and recalling his longtime opposition to ethanol subsidies when he was a US senator.
On Sunday, Bradley defended a 1993 vote cited by Gore during Saturday's debate, saying the vote was on an amendment for millions of dollars in spending for other programs, and not just the flood relief Gore said it represented.
But yesterday Bradley shifted his focus to education, a theme that has been somewhat overshadowed by his emphasis on health care and campaign finance reform. Recently, Bradley, who has been fending off charges from the Gore campaign that he has not offered a coherent and substantive education plan, sought yesterday to underscore his commitment to an issue that tops public opinion polls.
Citing a recent estimate by Education Secretary Richard Riley that as many as 250,000 American schoolteachers are unqualified, Bradley reiterated education proposals that he said would add 60,000 new teachers a year, offer loan forgiveness to students who commit to teaching for four years in high-need classrooms, and offer scholarships of $7,500 to gifted students who commit to teach in high-need subject matters. Bradley also said he would increase federal funding for community colleges by 33 percent.
For Bradley, the greatest challenge on this long day of campaigning may have been holding the attention of dozens of Exira Elementary School students, some as young as 5, who gathered in a small gymnasium to hear him speak.
Setting aside his characteristic reserve, Bradley led the youngest of the children in a clapping game that left them laughing with glee.
''Is it fun running for president?'' asked one young girl, bouncing in her seat.
''Yes,'' Bradley answered. ''Most days.''
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
