Bradley’s Future Pro-Con Is Sen. Bill Bradley Presidential Material Or Should He Retire To A Think Tank?

Here’s what I have to say about U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley’s hints that he might make an independent bid for the presidency:

He’s got my vote.

If I didn’t have a kid starting college next week, he’d have my help. If my kids were grown, I’d quit this job and go to work for a Bradley for President campaign. Presidential politics in this country needs what Bradley offers me - charisma, sensitivity and respectability.

Those who have heard Bradley speak on the floor of the Senate or heard him testify before congressional committees certainly must be wondering how I can get so carried away over a guy who often comes across as interesting as a slice of unbuttered Wonder Bread. When I asked the newspaper’s library to bring me some reference material on Bradley, the librarian showed up with a magazine article on Bradley’s speech to the 1992 Democratic Convention. The story contained this revealing abstract:

“Bradley’s athletic grace, his intellect and his legislative achievements were trumpeted in an exciting video preceding his speech. Unfortunately, the address itself was stilted and forced.”

My confidence in Bradley has to do with more than his three terms as a senator from New Jersey. My belief in him is rooted in a quaint notion: I now want for my country what I once wanted for myself and still wish for my children.

You see, when I was 12 years old, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have answered, “I want to be just like Bill Bradley.”

At that time, in the mid-1960s, Bradley wasn’t just a basketball star. To me, he symbolized every virtue I could think of. He was my version of traditional family values. The hard work, confidence, decency and intelligence that I saw in Bradley were the things I tried to find in myself and instill in my sons.

Bradley went to school at Princeton, an Ivy League college, whose academic reputation far outstripped its athletic credentials. Yet he led his team to the NCAA Final Four in 1965 and scored 58 points in a game against Wichita State. It was the kind of David and Goliath performance from which legends are born.

Bradley was an “unnatural,” player - not quite fast enough or tall enough to do what he did. It was said, only half in jest, that Bradley, as a New York Knicks player, could barely jump over the Sunday edition of the New York Times.

Bradley found a way to succeed not because of his physical skills, but in spite of them. But even that made him only so unique. The thing that finally set him apart for me, the thing that will get him my vote each and every time I can cast it is his sense of balance.

Today, more than a quarter-century after I read it, a scene still stands out from a biography of Bill Bradley. His Princeton team had just finished a big game. It was late at night. Bradley had played spectacularly. He was exhausted. I can’t remember if the game was won or lost. What I remember is that Bradley took a shower, got dressed and headed for the library to do homework.

In addition to being an overachiever on the basketball court, Bradley was a superb student, talented enough to win a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University and devoted enough to the pursuit of knowledge to delay the start of his professional basketball career in order to go to England and study.

So what does all this have to do with being president of the United States?

At this point in my life, everything. More than any particular dogma involving taxes or defense spending or health care reform or education or social programs or foreign affairs, I want a person in the White House who inspires my faith. I want someone whose lead I can follow enthusiastically.

I trust Bill Bradley. It doesn’t matter to me how “stilted or forced” his speeches are. I always will judge him on a lifetime of actions, not a few minutes of words, because for me, his substance won out over his style a long time ago.

xxxx