OSTA MESA, Calif. - Inside the exclusive Center Club, the 100 or so high rollers who had donated $1,000 each for a private luncheon with the Democratic presidential candidate, Bill Bradley, had almost finished their steak and wine when a donor had one last question for the former New Jersey senator.
What would Bradley do to revamp the tax code, the questioner asked, lobbing a softball to the senator. Bradley, after all, authored a bill that cut tax rates by closing loopholes, wrote a book on the subject and was speaking in the middle of Orange County, home of the California tax revolt.
But Bradley had a surprise.
''I view that as a second-term issue,'' he said, dead serious.
Some donors gasped. None applauded. A few knives and forks clinked to the table. In this instant, the essence of Bill Bradley was on display: a contrarian blend of blunt candor and an aloof I-do-it-my-way approach that no consultant would dare dream up.
What was also on display is a candidate that some of Bradley's former Senate colleagues barely recognize. The man whose ideology often ran to moderation or conservatism on key issues in the Senate has succeeded so far by running to the left of Vice President Al Gore on gun control and health care. The earnest, contemplative figure widely recalled as a ''loner'' in the Senate who lacked ''people skills'' has now thrust himself onto center stage, serenely recounting his childhood and urging voters to ''tell me your stories.''
''I want to give people a narrative of where we are headed,'' Bradley said when asked to describe the theme of his campaign. At appearances from New Hampshire to California, it has become clear that the 56-year-old Bradley has made more than a transition to the campaign trail; he has undergone a transformation.
This, friends say, is something that has been missed in all the coverage of Bradley's career, from his days as a basketball star to his 18 years as a senator. After retiring from the Senate in 1996, Bradley spent two years teaching at Stanford and Notre Dame, honing his speaking style and testing his philosophy in 70 lectures, all the while plotting how to beat Gore. And so far, the plan he hatched has worked better than he could have imagined.
But now, as the two Democratic candidates prepare for a much-anticipated ''town meeting'' this Wednesday at Dartmouth College that could turn into a full-scale debate, Bradley is facing a new test. Having rocketed in a few short months from long-shot challenger to a viable alternative to Gore, he now draws scrutiny as a man who really might be president.
Bradley seems to have a sense of where he is on the road to his goal, and how he will respond to his new celebrity. He says he'd still rather share his way of thinking than deafen his audiences with policy detail. So, even as Gore begins to lash at him on specifics, Bradley doesn't plan to take a position on every issue. (Even his daughter, he says, has grown bored by his talk of tax overhaul.) Instead, he is focusing on a few major proposals: near-universal health care coverage, handgun registration, improving race relations and relieving childhood poverty.
To some observers, among them partisans of the Gore camp, Bradley's notions are like heaves from half-court, idealistic plans that have little chance of passage but that are designed to appeal to party activists who play a big role in determining the Democratic nominee. But Bradley is convinced that he can convince a prosperous nation that the time is right for his ''big ideas,'' even while acknowledging that his sweeping costly proposals offer an invitation for attacks.
''It's like tossing red meat in the wolves' cage,'' Bradley said in an interview, gesturing to himself.
In the space of five hours in New Hampshire, two very different Bradleys emerged.
The first scene was a press conference at the Manchester Community Health Center, where Bradley was pushing his $65 billion health care plan and facing the press. Bradley acted stumped when a reporter asked about differences on foreign policy between himself and Gore.
''I don't know,'' Bradley said. ''I mean, he hasn't really made any statements on foreign policy in the campaign. I'll be laying out my views on foreign policy over the next two months.''
Gore, in fact, has spent much of his career talking about foreign policy and has played a major role in shaping the Clinton administration's view of the world. But there is another reason for Bradley's reticence: he is still developing his own foreign policy. So he is reluctant, perhaps unready, to engage Gore on the issue.
Bradley was equally unresponsive on a spicy domestic controversy. A reporter asked what Bradley thought about the widely reported comments by Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, who had been quoted as saying that organized religion is a ''sham,'' a crutch for weak-minded people.
Bradley had no idea what the reporter is talking about. Later, when an aide was asked whether it is possible that Bradley was unaware of such a well-known controversy, the aide said he didn't doubt it.
''Not if we didn't tell him,'' Bradley press secretary Eric Hauser said. ''His focus is on more significant things.'' Indeed, Bradley only ''rarely'' watches television news, Hauser said.
But if Bradley sometimes seems tuned only to his own channel, he also has a way of connecting with listeners, spinning tales with the timing of Garrison Keillor of ''Prairie Home Companion.'' This side of Bradley emerges at a town meeting in Bedford, where Bradley reminisces about visiting a favorite spot on the Mississippi River in his hometown of Crystal City, Mo.
''I listened to the wind blowing through cottonwood trees,'' Bradley said, seemingly lost in a private rapture. ''The current heading to New Orleans. I paused, looked up behind me at the limestone bluffs that have been there for a millennium. I thought to myself, this means permanence to me. That river, those bluffs.''
The 300 townspeople sat spellbound in their metal folding chairs inside the school auditorium. Then Bradley blurted out a thought: ''News on the hour.''
Bradley did not explain this interjection, but he sourly spat out the words, which appeared to be aimed both at the media and at the public's short attention span. Then swimming back into his original rhetorical stream, he concluded: ''To be in touch with that permanence is important.''
From most other candidates, this might have come off as cosmic wandering, vaguely reminiscent of Jerry Brown's ''Governor Moonbeam'' iconoclasm.
But from Bradley, who has written a book about his basketball career (''Life on the Run'') and another about his childhood and Senate life (''Time Present, Time Past''), such philosophizing is the soul of the campaign. Indeed, it may mean as much or more to him as the $65 billion in programs.
''I want to cleanse our democratic process, revitalize faith in each other, put purpose back in public service,'' Bradley said. ''I'm doing that in a way that I think is true to who I am.''
Few people are watching Bradley with as much fascination as his former colleagues in the Senate. Former senator Paul Simon, the Illinois Democrat who also has run for the presidency and who has not made an endorsement in this race, has no recollection of Bradley as a leader on one of his signature campaign issues, health care. Other former colleagues note that Bradley often took conservative positions, supporting private school vouchers and aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
''Bill Bradley was somewhat of a loner,'' Simon said. ''He was not a particularly collegial member of the Senate. He is a thoughtful guy, and very able, and if he is the Democratic nominee I would have no difficulty supporting him. But he is a loner and also very cautious.''
Indeed, it was Bradley's caution in 1990 that made him slow to distance himself from a tax increase proposed by former governor Jim Florio in New Jersey. That misstep nearly led to his defeat in his last reelection bid, a near-death experience over taxes that helps explain why Bradley isn't pushing a new reform scheme, at least in a first term.
Still, Bradley's closest friends say this is a less-inhibited man on the campaign trail.
Don Roth, a former World Bank treasurer, said his onetime Princeton teammate was never comfortable compromising in the clubby confines of the Senate.
Roth said that nothing defines ''the new Bill'' so much as the way Bradley delivers his anecdote-filled narrative about two Americas, one prosperous, one in poverty. Roth recalled Bradley having an epiphany before deciding to run for president: ''He said, `When I talk about the US economy, people yawn. When I talk about race, they yawn. When I talk about national security, they yawn. But if I talk about ... what we are here for, I will have 10,000 people on their feet crying.'''
Roth concluded: ''He is comfortable for the first time in his public life. He is at peace with himself.''
This style was on vivid display one day recently at the Latino Health Access clinic in Santa Ana, Calif. After Bradley delivered his health care address, he urged those in the audience to ''tell your stories.''
Within minutes, a woman rose to tell how she had buried seven family members and friends during the past year, some of whom she believed would be alive if Bradley's health plan were passed. For the next 20 minutes, with some Oprah Winfrey-style prodding from Bradley, the stories flowed and the former senator glowed as the audience made his case.
But the event took place on the worst day in months for Bradley's campaign, just after Gore had been endorsed by the AFL-CIO convention up the coast in Los Angeles. Bradley had hoped to address the convention and had spent months wooing labor in hopes of at least delaying an endorsement, which would have been viewed as a major defeat for Gore. But Bradley skipped the convention after the vice president wrapped up the backing of the AFL-CIO, and the campaign arranged for the health care event.
By appearing in Santa Ana, more than an hour from Los Angeles, Bradley ensured little of the television coverage that is crucial in California. The event also underscored that Bradley -- unlike candidates such as Gore and George W. Bush -- does not speak Spanish. When a woman asked a question in Spanish, Bradley gamely responded by saying ''Si'' until someone finally stepped up to translate.
Sometimes, as well, Bradley seems oblivious to the usual campaign form. During his speech, Bradley nonchalantly perched his narrow reading glasses halfway down the bridge of his nose, even though he rarely reads from his text, causing some aides to cringe at the camera-unfriendly posture.
But this all made sense to at least one member of the audience, Hollywood film director Myles Berkowitz. Berkowitz, who directed and starred in a recent film called ''Twenty Dates'' -- in which he filmed his attempts to find an ideal match -- wants to make a video about Bradley. Berkowitz says the public is ready for a professorial kind of guy.
''I do think him standing at the podium, with his glasses, speaking his ideas, is going to outshine a candidate coming into a hall to the sound of `Love Train,''' Berkowitz said, referring to Gore's arrival before the AFL-CIO.
It was a crisp, campaign-perfect day in New Hampshire when Bradley walked into the Wedding Room of the Bedford Wayfarer Hotel, where the dreams of countless brides and grooms - and more than a few presidential candidates - have been so carefully plotted in the first-primary state.
It is a fitting backdrop for the Democratic presidential candidate, for a man living what he calls the ''theory of sequential lives.'' Bradley's sequence has included quite a few - the small-town Missouri basketball star, the Olympic champion, the Rhodes Scholar, the New York Knick, the New Jersey senator.
Throughout his life, Bradley has been both a solitaire and a team player, the passer who didn't mind who got credit for the basket, the senator who didn't do much to build allliances but also didn't care whose name was on the bill. This is, after all, a man who once wrote of basketball, ''I always preferred finesse to muscle and team play to solo action.''
Yet Bradley seemed taken aback when asked if he was trying to muscle away the nomination from Gore, risking a fight that could cost the Democratic team its shot at retaining the presidency. ''That is a tough analogy to make,'' Bradley responded. ''Be careful. I think competition is good. The people have a right to determine who a nominee will be.''
As the competition intensifies, Bradley's strength remains largley untested. His sudden rise in New Hampshire polls - a regional showing that gave a bit of a boost to his campaign nationally - has come without the use of some traditional political weapons. He pulled even with Gore without airing a single television ad, with only a few endorsements from the political establishment, and before outlining his major initiatives.
But it remains possible he will falter once he faces Gore's advertising and once his policy plans are better examined. He may wilt after he faces the vice president in debates. His leisurely, narrative style may not wear well. Already, Republicans are attacking him as just another tax-and-spend liberal.
But Bradley is serene. As he sits in the Wedding Room, he is already dreaming about the last act of his life, when he hopes to fulfill one of his mother's wishes. He recalls that, when he was a child, his mother gave up on one of her demands, giving him a card that said: ''You no longer have to take piano lessons. Happy Birthday.''
Now, Bradley says, ''Maybe when I am 78 I will take piano and after two or three years, I will open a piano bar.'' He envisions a two-term former president playing at a packed house. He'd call it ''Bill's Place.''
