s he enters the final, one-month stretch to the New Hampshire primary, Bill Bradley has no tricks, no gimmicks, no last-ditch, pull-out-all-the- stops surprises.
The former senator from New Jersey says he's going to keep hammering on the same issues he has been for the last year: overhauling campaign finance laws, eliminating child poverty, providing health insurance to the uninsured, and bringing about racial healing.
During an interview in a minivan while being driven to New Hampshire yesterday, Bradley acknowledged that the constant criticism he has weathered from Vice President Al Gore has rankled him. But he maintained that he would not change his campaign strategy.
''I don't think it's working,'' Bradley said of Gore's tactics. ''I think people really don't want negative campaigning and attacks. They want a fresh start and they want to know what people are going to do.''
If Gore were to launch television commercials that explicitly attacked him, Bradley said, he would respond. Then he said he might not. ''Sure, absolutely,'' he said. ''Unless we felt it's best not to.''
Bradley said Gore's approach to their rivalry has been to engage in ''old politics,'' and to mimic Bradley's ideas and campaign events, even his words.
''What's he going to do tomorrow?'' Bradley said, referring to a speech Gore plans to give today in Iowa that closely resembles the theme of Bradley's talk in Manchester, N.H. about the possibilities of the new century.
''When we schedule something, he schedules something,'' Bradley said. ''It's been that way, which is a compliment.''
As New Hampshire voters consider Bradley and Gore in the Democratic primary Feb. 1, Bradley said, they will not just be choosing between two politicians.
Bradley was in Boston yesterday to attend an event at City Year in the South End, where a group of students and community supporters gave him a red City Year windbreaker that he wore for most of the day. City Year has invited all of the presidential candidates to speak, but so far only Bradley has accepted.
''The question really is, what's the direction of the Democratic Party?'' he said.
''Are we going to settle for symbolic actions, or are we going to be bold like Democrats have always been in periods of real change where people are looking for leadership?''
Asked if voters would be settling for the status quo if they chose Gore, Bradley said they would be settling for less, given the proposals Gore has been making, such as on health care and gun control.
Bradley noted that he and Gore have spent no time debating Gore's health plan, which would start by insuring all children and their parents, ''because it's so meager.''
Bradley's plan would eliminate Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor and disabled, and replace it with private insurance subsidies. Gore has repeatedly criticized that approach as leaving the most vulnerable population with an inadequate replacement.
Bradley said voters sense a chasm between a time when the Clinton administration aimed for universal health insurance and now.
In 1993, he said, when the United States had a $290 billion deficit and was six years away from bankruptcy in Medicare and borrowing from the Social Security trust fund, the vice president advocated national health insurance. But now, Bradley said, the nation has a budget surplus, Medicare is solid until 2015, and Social Security is overflowing, and the voters are wondering why not now.
''And I'm saying, `Now,''' Bradley said. ''And he's saying, `No, not now.' I think that's gotten through to people.''
Gore has said that he wants to provide universal health insurance, but that it should be instituted using a practical, methodical approach. He has aggressively questioned almost every aspect of Bradley's health care plan and contends that it would cost too much and hurt the economy.
Bradley said he believes Gore's approach to the campaign has been counterproductive for Gore.
''When you get into `My coat is warmer than your coat,' then you're where politics has always been,'' Bradley said. ''The public says, `Click, typical politician.'''
Although Bradley has repeatedly dismissed the notion that he must leave Iowa and New Hampshire with at least one success, he described the Granite State ''as a very good place to begin this thing.''
If there is one message he would like to send to New Hampshire voters, he said, it's on the subject of campaign finance reform.
A vote for Bradley, he suggested, is a vote in favor of eliminating special interest money from the political system.
''I feel New Hampshire voters are on the cutting edge and they can send a message that this counts,'' he said. ''There's an independent spirit that people do not want to be compromised by forces beyond their control.''
