SAN JOSE, Calif. -- After a princely procession as the dauphin of privilege, George W. Bush reinvented himself. He became ''a reformer with results,'' a risky move because in his home state, a reformer is a sidewinder real Texans won't cotton to.
John McCain, the grouchy scourge of the Arizona press, reinvented himself into ''The Truman Show,'' funnier than Jim Carrey, host of a rolling gabfest as open as community access cable.
Al Gore, called ''Prince Albert'' by congressional colleagues, led an entourage as blithely imperial as Bush's. He then dispatched his campaign to Nashville, swapped blue-suit blandness for earth tones, and now eagerly begs for votes.
In this season of reinvented candidates, Bill Bradley came to the capital of the reinvented world economy to show California Democrats that he has not reinvented himself. If there is a new Bradley, he sounds like the old Bush or the old Gore.
The former New Jersey senator spoke for 41 minutes. Behind him at the San Jose convention center stood some of the most thoughtful idealists in California politics. They and other supporters were aching to applaud, but he fed them little as he rambled through autobiographical musings. Six months after he formally announced for president, Bradley is still introducing himself.
He was proud of his father, a banker. ''Throughout the Great Depression, he never foreclosed on a single home,'' Bradley said, a remark which ignited the applause and sign-waving one would expect at a Democratic state convention. But Bradley is a different candidate. As if to stifle applause, he said, ''My mother always wanted me to be a success, my father always wanted me to be a gentleman, and neither one of them wanted me to be a politician.'' This puzzler united friends and foes into pondering its point: two out of three ain't bad?
When Bradley declared, ''I want to be president of the United States,'' the applause was more fervent. It seemed a startling assertion amid a catalog of political science nostrums.
In presidential campaigns, media critics love to tut-tut that reporters try to start fights between candidates. Here, the Bradley staff was spinning furiously, hoping to inject conflict and to conjure up news from a newsless speech. Bradley barely mentioned his rival Gore, ''but it was a vivid contrast,'' they said, so subtle you may have missed it.
The Gore spinners were silent, happy to be on Page A21 when their man is miles ahead in the polls. Gore's 20-minute speech was a random collection of nouns and adjectives surrounding the word ''fight.'' He promised to fight for California, for America, for its women, children and other assorted causes.
The vice president then slowed down and read from notes, pelting his opponent as though this were still a close contest. ''When he retired from the Senate during our first term, Senator Bradley spoke of a political process that was paralyzed, a continual deadlock,'' he said. ''Senator Bradley seemed to suffer from a kind of Demo-pessimism. But I tell you today, Senator Bradley gave up too soon.''
During Gore's extended attack, applause was muted. California Democrats are fastidious enough to avert their gaze during a stabbing of the wounded. But Gore followed his consultant's script, fighting against a phantom.
Bradley is a former Olympic champion, Ivy League all-star, Rhodes scholar, and Hall of Famer. In the face of sustained adversity, he has yet to reinvent himself. Maybe he knows something others don't know. His performance evoked what H. L. Mencken wrote about the elder Henry Cabot Lodge, the Massachusetts senator who was chairman of the Republican National Convention of 1920:
''He presided over the sessions from a sort of aloof intellectual balcony, far above the swarming and bawling of the common herd. He was there in the flesh, but his soul was in some remote and esoteric Cathay.''
Martin F. Nolan's column appears regularly in the Globe.
