Who's the real underdog?

It's hard to get a handle on Bradley. He simply doesn't move at the pace of a modern-day politician. Like Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, he has a reputation for being something of a political philosopher and not having much patience for detail or down and dirty legislating. But Bradley has none of the frenetic energy of Brown. Even Gore, for all of his stodginess, is more personally animated.

Bradley is certainly not without charm. It would be easy to imagine him with a loyal, quasi-cultish following if he were a college professor. His deliberate style and deadpan wit just seem more suited for the classroom than modern-day presidential politics. When a reporter asked him about a recent remark by Gore to the effect that the difference between him and Bradley was like the difference between Coke and Pepsi, Bradley quipped, "I always thought of myself as diet wild cherry."

And though his awkwardness with people has been well-documented -- he is not a "feel-your-pain" politician à la Clinton -- Bradley is not under the pressure Gore is under to be like Clinton. It helps underscore the undeniable fact that while Bradley and Gore have both admitted to past marijuana use, Bradley could pass for the first true stoner president.

Bradley is often described as disconnected and aloof. It is not an arrogant aloofness, just, in the words of one Democratic political operative, "weird." California Democratic campaign consultant Steve Gray-Barkan said Bradley tried to change his image as "an ideas guy" over the course of the last election, when he set up his own political action committee to raise funds to help Democratic congressional candidates locked in tough races.

"That's a pretty common tool, and it's a good way to earn some political loyalty and debt," he said. But when Bradley went to stump for Democrats in those races, Gray-Barkan heard stories of his unorthodox political presence.

"The way he communicated with people face-to-face wasn't typical," he said diplomatically. "It wasn't that people felt he was distant. Everyone felt like he was thinking about what they were saying, but there was something sort of absent-minded professor about him."

Even in the midst of fairly fawning media coverage of late, Bradley's essential strangeness is coming through. In Time magazine's glowing cover package on Bradley, "The Man Who Could Beat Al Gore," the hagiographic headlines and photo gallery are a little undermined by Eric Pooley's honest report. He describes Bradley at his climactic campaign moment to date -- his kickoff speech in Crystal City, Mo., "visibly withdrawing, pulling back into himself ... looking bored and distracted one minute, uncomfortable the next."

Pooley goes on to describe him ignoring his second grade music teacher, "gaz[ing] into the distance, even forgetting to thank her as she goes by -- until his wife, Ernestine Schlant, elbows him and he hauls himself out of the chair and gives the old lady a hug."

A similar Bradley was on display as he sold his health-care plan in a roundtable discussion in Oakland Thursday. He shook hands with all present with the somber mien of a eulogist at a funeral. With his grim, policy-wonk face on, Bradley listened to the crowd's health-care concerns, prefacing his remarks with questions like, "I want to get a context for the world you're operating in." This is not your typical presidential sound bite, but it's pretty standard for Bradley. His idea of a joke was warning the crowd, "I have one question -- but it has five parts."

But many of those in attendance Thursday praised Bradley's new $65 billion health-care proposal, even while quibbling with details. "I commend him for putting the idea of universal health care back on the table," Berkeley resident Susan Tom. And with two more major policy speeches set for later this month -- an Oct. 7 speech in New Hampshire about work and families and an Oct. 21 speech in New York on child poverty -- Bradley is doing what Warren Beatty says he might maybe sort of want to do. Bradley is the only non-Christian conservative in the race who is actually moving the debate on key policy issues.

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