oday, Senator Edward M. Kennedy will endorse Vice President Al Gore at a Dorchester middle school. Tomorrow, Bill Bradley will rally with a thousand or more supporters at Faneuil Hall.
Hold the snapshots side by side. The contrast explains how the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination became a horse race.
The phenomenon is similar in the Republican race where George W. Bush, no longer the prohibitive favorite, is adding former rival Elizabeth Dole to his phone book-thick list of political endorsers. Unfazed, Senator John McCain, with negligible institutional support, surges as the straight-shooting populist.
Gore and Bush are running traditional set-piece campaigns, like a deliberate half-court offense in basketball with carefully rehearsed plays. Bradley and McCain, meanwhile, are waging unorthodox campaigns, as unpredictable as a fast-break offense on the court.
As a former senator from New Jersey and an incumbent senator from Arizona, neither Bradley nor McCain can claim the status of antipolitician. But each has clearly identified something in the national mood, a weariness and cynicism toward the political process. Both underdogs are running against the prevailing political culture, speaking past the kingmakers to voters. Their tub-thumping for campaign-finance reform is a metaphor for broader themes of cleaning up the political process.
By their insistence that they will not run negative campaigns, McCain and Bradley have set a gentlemanly tone. In the unlikely event it endures through the primaries, that alone will be a remarkable contribution to the process.
For two candidates who weren't supposed to be in the picture at this point, it's an unusual strategy. We'll know soon if this wildfire will spread. In 19 days, the precinct caucuses will be held in Iowa where Bradley and McCain stand little or no chance of winning because the role of party chieftains there plays to the Gore and Bush strengths.
But eight days later, in New Hampshire, the first primary, independents can vote in either primary. Forget the McCain and Bradley campaign spin. The Granite State is a must-win if both candidacies expect to survive in the bigger states.
To win, both will need independents, who could account for a quarter of the turnout in either party primary on Feb. 1.
Some polls have indicated the independent interest could run even higher this year, but New Hampshire Secretary of State William M. Gardner believes those numbers are high. In 1996, the only year in which the state kept a tally of independent voters in presidential primaries, 21 percent of the 303,255 voters were independent - ''undeclared'' for either party - before entering the polls, Gardner's statistics show. There was no Democratic contest that year, however, to attract independent voters.
For Gore and Bush, the party faithful are their bedrock support. That's why each stockpiled endorsements. Depending on your point of view, it creates an aura of inevitability or establishes a useless Maginot Line of defense against insurgencies that seek to change the process.
On the Democratic side, Kennedy for months resisted the probing and prodding of Gore intermediaries who ardently pursued the liberal warhorse. The pressure came not from the Clinton White House but from Gore operatives with overlapping ties to Kennedy, sources close to Kennedy said.
At this point, though, it's not clear what weight Kennedy's approval carries. Endorsements are not what ails the Gore candidacy. His nomination has gone from a sure thing to an iffy proposition despite having scads of them.
Nevertheless, Gore's camp is convinced that a nod from Kennedy has great significance because of his party stature. He is a lion of liberal Democrats, whose flirtation with Bradley in the Granite State has been warming toward full-blown romance. He's also the champion of health care reform, a key issue in the race and the subject of Kennedy's appearance with Gore this afternoon in Portsmouth, N.H. That's one photo opportunity.
Compared to the Gore-Kennedy events, Bradley lacks political superstars for his rally in Boston tomorrow. Instead, a supporting cast of at least a thousand supporters will attend, aides predict. Ten months ago, Bradley's campaign didn't exist in this state. Tomorrow, he will release a list of 2,000-plus volunteers and about 50 legislators who are backing the maverick Democrat in Massachusetts. That's another photo op.
Hold the snapshots side by side. The contrast will explain how this campaign became a horse race.
