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From early on, Bradley says he made decisions based on intuition and hunches -- what he calls thinking "outside the frame." He accepted a basketball scholarship to Duke University, but changed his mind during a senior-year trip to Europe, when a bunch of high school girls expressed shock that he would choose Duke over Princeton. He also wanted to return to Europe -- to Oxford University -- to study, and found out that Princeton had produced more Rhodes scholars than any other school. Four days before Duke's freshman class was to convene, he switched schools.

After fame and championships as a Princeton scholar-athlete, Bradley opted not to hit the pros, instead taking his chance to return to Europe, thanks to Mr. Rhodes. There his horizons were so broadened he didn't touch a basketball for almost a year.

But in his second year at Oxford, he had an epiphany -- one that's not unlike the recent awakening that spurred him to head for the White House. "I went to the Oxford gym for some long overdue exercise," he wrote in "Life on the Run." "There I shot alone -- just the ball, the basket, and my imagination. As I heard the swish and felt my body loosen into familiar movements ... [a] feeling came over me that stirred something deep inside ... I knew that never to play again, never to play against the best, the pros, would be to deny an aspect of my personality perhaps more fundamental than any other ... Three weeks later I signed a contract with the New York Knicks."

In his 10 years as a Knick, and 18 as a senator, Bradley traveled the nation and the world asking people to tell him their "story" -- the short bios of regular folk that he peppers throughout "Life on the Run" and "Time Present, Time Past." Through these experiences, he says, he developed a sense of this country unlike that of the Washington-raised heir apparent. "I got up a lot of mornings ... where I never thought of the federal government," he tells the crowd at a Hanover meet-and-greet.

Bradley also credits his upbringing, and his years with the Knicks, with developing the central preoccupation of his political life: race. He grew up close to an African-American family employee, who introduced him to basketball, since the disabled Warren Bradley couldn't. When Bradley was 21, his concern took a political turn when he served as a summer intern in the U.S. House of Representatives during the debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. His interest in the subject grew during his days on the road with Knicks like Willis Reed, Earl "the Pearl" Monroe, Dick Barnett and Walt Frazier, and it became increasingly complex upon his realization that his beloved Aunt Bub was as bigoted as Jesse Helms. Bradley has been forced to come to terms with race in America as have few white men -- especially few white men running for president.

"I have changed in some ways because of my black friends," Bradley wrote in "Life on the Run," published two years before he first ran for office. "I regard authority a little more skeptically than I once did. I am more interested in experiencing life than in analyzing it ... And, I feel less guilty about the black man's experience in America, realizing that though some of my friends have come from a poorer background, it did not lack in the richness of family love and joy. I not only think less in terms of a black race but also in terms of other group labels. But, above all, I see how much I don't know and can never know about black people."

Seven years ago, on April 30, 1992, Bradley delivered one of the strongest -- and oddest -- speeches of his career, just after a Simi Valley, Calif., jury acquitted the policemen charged with beating Rodney King. Bradley stood on the floor of the Senate and re-created the 56 blows Rodney King suffered in 81 seconds by banging a lectern with a pencil 56 times. "Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow," Bradley said, hitting the desk each time. He called on the attorney general to file criminal civil rights charges against the police officers, and invoked James Baldwin to warn the nation that "the fire the next time is going to engulf all of us."

In his presidential race, though, it's not yet clear how his concern about race will translate into policy. Bradley supports hate crimes legislation -- unlike Gov. George W. Bush, he points out. He applauds the diversity of Clinton's presidential appointments, and says that Clinton is "at his most authentic" when talking about race. Above all, he says, his desire to heal the wounds of a racist society are seen in his plans to throw a lifeline to those left behind by the economic recovery.

"One in five children in America live in poverty," Bradley observed Tuesday, in his long-awaited campaign speech on race. "Among black children, 40 percent are destitute." While the speech was light on policy prescriptions, Bradley called for "a multiracial coalition" -- like the ones that fought "for civil rights in the 1960s and [rebuilt] burned-out black churches in the 1990s" -- to help society's neediest kids, making "sure they have a healthy start, a nurturing childhood and a chance for a good education." Bradley sees his children's crusade as a means to provide a "shared purpose" for all of us, reaffirm "our common humanity."

Conversely, on the Gore 2000 Web site, a questionnaire asking browsers what issue they feel is the "most important facing the United States today" lists seven policy concerns, none of which has anything to do with race. His "issues" page lists 11 categories; again, race isn't mentioned.

And yet Gore is expected to reap the endorsements of leading black politicians. In what could be a microcosm of Bradley's uphill struggle for the nomination, sources say most black leaders are likely to endorse the front-running vice president, whose positions on race, poverty and urban issues are strong, if not as strong as Bradley's. Donna Brazile, a leader in Jesse Jackson's two campaigns for president, was recently hired to help Gore line up high-profile black supporters.

When Bradley is asked if he hopes that his long-held interest in bridging the racial divide might somehow translate into African-American votes, he says, "Quite frankly, that's not the central consideration. But if there's any arithmetic, it's that way over 50 percent of the American people would like there to be racial understanding. If there is a calculation, that's the calculation."
salon.com | April 22, 1999

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