NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE / DAVID M. SHRIBMAN

Bradley signals his time is now

By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff, April 13, 1999

WEST ORANGE, N.J. -- In a warren of offices set back from Pleasant Valley Way is a presidential campaign in the making. The computers are whirring, the lights on the phone console are flashing. The flags of New Hampshire and Iowa are hung on the wall with care.

The campaign has been in the making only for months. The candidate has been in the making for 55 years. Understand that, and you understand the one essential fact about Bill Bradley's drive for the White House.

Listen to his speeches, monitor his asides, engage him in conversation, and the phrase turns up repeatedly: "life experience." Life experience -- a Mississippi River boyhood, years on the basketball court at Princeton and Madison Square Garden, three terms in the Senate from his adopted home of New Jersey -- is what he hopes will set him apart from Vice President Al Gore. Life experience -- more precisely, a life full of reflection about his experience -- is what he hopes will shape his appeal to Democratic voters.

The result is an unusual moment in American politics. The struggle between Bradley, pointed toward the presidency since he was in high school, and Gore, bred for the presidency by a senator father whose own White House hopes turned to dross, is the only 11-month, one-on-one primary battle in history. It pits two men who are unapologetically intellectual, two men who luxuriate in complexities, two men of deep personal feelings and yearnings, two men of equally deep shyness.

Here's why: "I've been on the road in America for over 30 years. There's a continuum in that experience. I've sought out people, asked them to tell me their stories. It has told me who the American people are. I've gone through big chunks of my life never thinking about the federal government. In that sense I am like many -- most -- Americans."

Like Gore, Bradley has a wry sense of humor, along with a high-brow brand of mischief. (Bradley on Gore's claims about the Internet: "I invented the half-court press. No, I invented a unique free-throw style.") But in the last decade Bradley has changed -- elementally, his friends say.

He once thought of himself as leading by the force of his mind. Now he's more interested in the impulses of the heart. He talks like that now. In that regard, he surprisingly is kind of a Bill Clinton with footnotes. No campaign hugs -- yet.

"I once lived in a cautious world," says Bradley. He is wearing worn corduroy trousers of no distinguishable hue, along with a V-neck sweater that once might have been olive green, maybe aqua blue. "Things happened -- a close call in the 1990 election, a couple of friends committing suicide, my wife developing breast cancer. I realized life wasn't forever, that I had better live it to the fullest and utilize my powers while they are at their peak."

Thus a presidential campaign. The unspoken slogan might be: This time, with feeling.

So he's talking more about feelings than about issues, which is not what voters are expecting. The policy papers will come later, probably in the fall. The grave pronouncements about the challenges of the future are on hold for now. (They'll come, and it's a safe bet that racial unity will trump the Internet.)

But right now Bradley wants people to know that he's not a cardboard character. He wants them to know how he'd be as president as much as what he'd do. "I'd be direct," he says. "There would be a minimum of manipulation. There would be a maximum of boldness where leadership is needed. The presidency would be driven by conviction."

In a lengthy talk the other afternoon this image screamed out. This is a slightly retooled, refreshed Bill Bradley, in touch with his feelings, seeking to touch the voters, feeling good about it all. The conversation turned to British history, to Winston Churchill, to the wartime prime minister's belief that "all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial." That's not unlike Bradley's view of this moment -- as his moment.

But it's also Gore's moment. The Republican campaign, featuring George W. Bush and Elizabeth H. Dole, is a clash of dynasties. The Democratic campaign, with Gore and Bradley, is a clash of destinies.