RYSTAL CITY, Mo. - Bolstered by his recent surge in New Hampshire polls, Bill Bradley promised voters ''big things'' and a leader they can trust yesterday, as he returned to the roots of his career and launched the second phase of his quest for the presidency.
Bradley, after waging a preliminary, low-profile effort to cast himself as Vice President Al Gore's superior in electability and political vision, moved to exploit those issues, formally announcing his candidacy amid the nostalgia of the small town that nurtured his rise to fame in the worlds of basketball and politics.
Bradley subtly struck at Gore's connection to questionable fund-raising practices in 1996, his steadfast support for President Clinton amid the White House sex scandal, and the administration's pursuit of incremental policy changes.
''I'm hoping that by Election Day, we will be choosing between two people whom we esteem, not the candidate we can still tolerate,'' Bradley told about 1,000 supporters in front of the Crystal City High School, where his portrait has hung for decades in the main hall.
By raising nearly $12 million in the first six months of the year and pulling into a statistical dead heat with Gore in New Hampshire polls conducted last week, Bradley has shown the potential to pose one of the most serious threats yet to an incumbent vice president seeking the Democratic nomination for president.
Although Bradley continues to trail by a wide margin in national polls, he is counting on having the money, celebrity, and message to catch Gore.
''I feel an urgent need to seize this moment in history, to strengthen the weak, and to challenge the strong to lead us into our full greatness as a nation,'' Bradley told the cheering crowd.
''I want the American dream for all of us - at last,'' he said. ''Come with me. Let us walk toward that dream together.''
Bradley, in renewing his pledge to eradicate childhood poverty, improve the education system, and dramatically expand access to health-care coverage, continued to resist calls to provide details of the ''big things'' he envisions and how he would achieve them.
The Republican mayor of Crystal City, Grant S. Johnston, counted himself among those awaiting specifics of Bradley's sweeping ideas. But Johnston, who told the crowd that he was taught in Crystal City schools about Bradley's legendary commitment to detail and achievement, said in an interview afterward that he expects Bradley to elaborate soon on his plans.
''I would like to hear more,'' Johnston said. ''But Bill is not one of those people who just says something and doesn't back it up. Bill will give us those details, I guarantee you.''
Bradley's aides said he plans to honor his pledge to fully describe his agenda this fall. They described his formal announcement as a forum for intimate personal reflection and a broader view of how he would change the nation.
On a dank, cloudy day near the banks of the Mississippi River, Bradley maintained his characteristic reserve as he recounted in a soft voice his course from Crystal City to basketball stardom at Princeton University. From the Ivy League, he went to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, won an Olympic gold medal in basketball, and starred for a decade for the New York Knicks on his way to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Bradley later represented New Jersey in the Senate for 18 years before returning to private life and planning his bid for the White House.
As some spectators strained to hear him, Bradley credited his father William, a Republican banker, and his mother Susie, a grade-school teacher, as well as the Crystal City community for his success.
Bradley said the Missouri hamlet of his youth was ''where the world of possibility and hope all began, a world I want to open for all Americans.''
The values he learned there, he said, would help him ''restore trust in public service and confidence in our collective will.''
Bradley asserted that the public trust has been compromised by special-interest pressures and campaign-finance abuses, an allusion to Gore's role in the 1996 fund-raising scandal. Bradley's vow to change the system drew one of the loudest cheers of the day.
''One thing about Bill Bradley, nobody is going to buy him off,'' said Ed Peterein, a retired construction worker who has known Bradley's family since he was a child. ''If Bill gets elected, all the lobbyists can quit and go home and start planting cotton and tobacco.''
Bradley led reporters last night on a walking tour of his hometown, starting at the cracked, asphalt basketball court in the backyard of his childhood home. He is to leave Crystal City today on a three-day bus caravan through Iowa, ending with a dinner speech Saturday in Sioux City.
