Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Bill Bradley may have "big ideas," but as a notoriously cautious senator he sat out the big political fights.
Aug 6, 1999 | These are heady days for former Sen. Bill Bradley. In early July the media was gushing about the $36 million George W. Bush had raised. But in some respects, Bradley's $9 million haul during the same three-month period was even more impressive.
His total was just a tad less than the $11 million raised by Al Gore. That's astounding considering that Gore has inherited most of Bill Clinton's vaunted fund-raising apparatus.
But the energy in the Bradley campaign isn't focused simply on fund-raising. One Saturday earlier this month, when I made the rounds of the various presidential campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, most were locked up for the weekend.
Not Bradley's, however. His office in Concord was humming with activity, with a dozen or more campaign workers manning phones, stapling posters and scribbling on yellow pads of paper.
When I stopped by Gore's comparatively spacious headquarters in Manchester a bit later, I found one guy hidden away behind a clutter of partitions looking over some papers and watching the Women's World Cup Soccer championship game. When I asked him why there was so much more going on back at Bradley headquarters, he thought about it for a moment and then told me, "I guess they feel like they've got to win here." Not the kind of response that gives you a lot of confidence in the vice president's campaign.
To date, however, Bradley's biggest bump in national news coverage came July 6 when he picked up the endorsement of Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey. That was followed by word that retiring New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's nod will likely follow later in the year.
In official Washington, few senators have better reputations for statesmanship and sagacity than Kerrey and Moynihan. And their decision to endorse former Senate colleague Bradley over former Senate colleague Gore has added still greater luster to Bradley's image as the thinking person's Democrat for president. Bradley, Kerrey and Moynihan are really senatorial peas in a pod.
To the vice president's supporters, of course, this is simply the anti-Clinton wing of the Democratic party lining up against the president's heir apparent. Both Kerrey and Moynihan have been conspicuously dismissive of the president. And the only other senator who's endorsed Bradley, Minnesota's Paul Wellstone, has been a persistent critic of the president from the party's left-liberal wing.
The pundits are right that there's more to the Kerrey endorsement. But it doesn't necessarily say something good about Bradley. Rather, it points to what could be a Bradley presidency's greatest fault. While Kerrey has a splendid reputation in official Washington, he has distinguished himself largely by remaining aloof from the great political battles of the last decade. Unfortunately, you can say much the same about Bradley.
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