Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Finally, Bradley shows his aggressive side and Gore goes on the defensive.
Jan 28, 2000 | In the closing days before the New Hampshire primary, former Sen. Bill Bradley now begins his speeches by, for all practical purposes, calling Vice President Al Gore a liar. Bradley defends the acts as political self-defense, but they have been the most pointed attacks in the presidential campaign to date. And ...
"Over the last four months, I've had my positions misrepresented. I think there's been a lot of misleading statements made by Al Gore," Bradley told a group of seniors here Friday morning. "If a candidate doesn't tell you the truth in a campaign, how do you trust that candidate as president? If a candidate doesn't care about you enough to tell you the truth in a campaign, how do you expect that candidate to care enough about you to fight for health care, to fight for good education policy. If a candidate doesn't respect you enough in a campaign to tell you the truth, then how will that candidate, when he's president, respect you enough to fight for campaign finance reform?"
Four days before voters here go to the polls, Bradley has made integrity and character the focal points. He first employed the strategy during the final New Hampshire debate between the two Wednesday, and it comes as polls show his support continuing to slide. Bradley, who once held a slight lead over the vice president in New Hampshire, now trails Gore by 18 points, according to a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll.
Staffers for Bradley dismiss those numbers as unreliable and say polls lag far behind the current thinking of this notoriously fickle electorate. The USA Today poll was taken in the days leading up to and immediately following Gore's impressive victory in the Iowa caucuses, and before Wednesday night's debate.
Bradley continued his sweeping attacks on the vice president, including hammering Gore's record on abortion, saying that while in Congress, Gore had "an 84 percent right-to-life voting record, which is fine. Everyone should evolve, but at least acknowledge where you came from. I believe that when he says he always supported Roe vs. Wade, that's not correct and that's not true."
On a radio talk show Thursday, Gore said that he has always been pro-choice, but acknowledged that at one time, he did not support public funding for abortion clinics. He has since modified that position.
Gore's campaign dismissed the charges as desperate tactics employed by a candidate on the ropes. Defending his pro-choice position, the campaign released a statement by New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen announcing a coalition of women endorsing Gore, and another letter signed by a roster of Gore's former congressional peers solidly supporting Gore's claims as a pro-choice candidate.
But Bradley wasn't done. He also took a shot at President Clinton, who used Thursday night's State of the Union Address as an opportunity to prop up his vice president. When asked about the president's speech, Bradley dismissed it as a speech of "a thousand promises," typical of what Bradley calls "the old politics."
"One thing the president did not say among his thousand promises, he did not say we should have universal health care for all Americans," he said
The town meetings advertised on the campaign schedule are a far cry from the town meetings held in the early stages of the campaign. Those were often intimate gatherings set in people's living rooms, a way for candidates to introduce themselves to voters. At this stage, "town meetings" are little more than campaign pep rallies. Most of the people in attendance, like teacher Peg Murphy, are here not to make up their minds, but to demonstrate support for their candidate. And it helps if their candidate is pumped up.
"I like that he's fighting back," Murphy said. "I just hope it's not too late."
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