ES MOINES -- When Bill Bradley announced last year that he would run for president, he strove to lay out clear differences between him and his Democratic opponent.
Both Bradley and Vice President Al Gore had few disputes on major policies. But Bradley singled out one contentious issue, welfare reform, as a point of divergence that would highlight his compassion for the poor.
The sweeping welfare overhaul law, passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by President Clinton with Gore's support, ended federal guarantees of cash assistance to poor mothers, transferred vast amounts of money and control from Washington to the states, and imposed new work requirements and time limits on welfare recipients.
Bradley, the former senator from New Jersey, vehemently opposed the legislation, calling it ''a poor person's nightmare.'' His position had promise of a lively debate within the Democratic Party over the historic shift in Washington's approach toward poverty.
With the primary and caucus voting season about to start, however, Bradley has muted criticism of the law and discusses it only when asked. At forums where welfare might be a natural topic -- like last Monday's Democratic debate on racial issues in Des Moines -- Bradley did not raise the subject.
Nor has Bradley proposed significant changes in the law, although he does call for a $10 billion plan to eliminate child poverty in America. Instead, he offers more of a wait-and-see approach.
Acknowledging that states have been given ''essentially total flexibility,'' Bradley said there was no certainty that governors would adhere to the law's work requirements and time limits, which allow a recipient a maximum of two years of federal aid without working and five years of aid over a lifetime.
''I'll watch very carefully how it's implemented,'' Bradley said in a recent interview. ''I'll be watching very carefully what governors do or do not do.''
Bradley's circumspect position might reflect the extent that the measure, once denounced by many Democrats, has lost appeal as a political issue, especially among the independent voters. With the welfare rolls down by 43 percent from a 1993 level of more than 6 million families, many moderate Democrats describe the law as a success of the Clinton-Gore era.
Bradley's position is a liability with mainstream Democratic voters, said Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute.
Welfare reform ''collapsed the scaffolding on which much of liberal policy rests,'' Marshall added. ''It was important for Democrats to show they could move past good intentions and instead produce a good result.''
Bradley is hardly alone in tempering his words on an issue that could prove politically perilous, especially in a general election. Gore, for instance, is the author of the 1988 environmental manifesto ''Earth In the Balance,'' but does not dwell on environmental issues in stump speeches.
Harvard University professor Cornel West, a Bradley supporter who calls welfare reform ''Reagan-like,'' acknowledged the difficulty in mustering public outrage at a time when the welfare rolls are plummeting. ''It's hard to get a rational discussion of it,'' West said.
Gore supporters say Bradley has been forced to admit that a central triumph of the Clinton-Gore administration has been chopping the national welfare rolls by almost half and putting tens of thousand of people into jobs.
''Bill Bradley began by criticizing welfare reform but has yet to offer anything in lieu of it,'' said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane. ''To me that is something of a metaphor for his campaign. He has big ideas, but you have yet to see these big ideas.''
Bradley notes that the welfare bill he opposed in 1996 with 20 other senators, has since been improved by Congress by repealing a cutoff of benefits to legal immigrants and adding billions of dollars for job-training and placement programs.
But he also argues that welfare reform has yet to be vindicated. He says an economic boom has covered up the measure's flaws and notes that while overall poverty is down in America, deep poverty is rising slightly.
''That tells me there are underlying questions,'' Bradley said.
The new system has done little to combat a breakdown of the family, Bradley added, pledging to ''think of innovative ways to deal with single parenthood.''
If Bradley has avoided a clear plan for changing the welfare system, however, his supporters say his overall campaign is largely devoted to fighting poverty and includes specific proposals to improve health care, education, and child care for the poor.
