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Misfits who don't kill
Outcasts who grew up without resorting to violence talk about what kept them from a Littleton-style massacre
By Charles Jones, Russell Morse and Hazel Tesoro
[04/22/99]

Outsiders, even among the outsiders
Littleton killers didn't quite fit in, even with the "Trench Coat Mafia."
By Dave Cullen
[04/22/99]

Bill Bradley's fast break
With a big campaign war chest, he thinks he can upset Al Gore.
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[04/22/99]

The big buildup
On the ground in Macedonia, it's beginning to look a lot like a ground war is coming.
By Laura Rozen
[04/20/99]

The "progressives' war"
Nothing shows how outdated our concepts of "left" and "right" are more than the confusing politics behind NATO's war in Yugoslavia.
By Joe Conason
[04/20/99]

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Bradley's big contrast with Gore, he says, is his "leadership style." He depicts the Veep as stuck in the quicksand of caution. In addition to seizing on the dangerous but necessary divide on race, as a senator Bradley took on "big, complicated issues," he says, like tax reform, international trade and -- if you're still awake -- water rights. (The only graphics in "Time Present, Time Past" are two maps that help explain the Central Valley Project and the Fallon-Paiute-Shonshone and Truckee-Carson-Pyramid Lake Water Settlement Act of 1990. Zzzzzz.)

Bradley derides Gore, on the other hand, as focusing on "postage stamp" issues -- like his recent crusade for more efficient air travel. But painting Gore as unwilling to deal with complexity sells the vice president short. His work on "reinventing government," his Senate efforts as a military hawk and an environmental dove -- not to mention his Unabomberesque "Earth in the Balance" -- have established Gore as a bona fide wonk. And Gore will be able to credibly cite the administration's first-term accomplishments on the economy and the deficit, in response to accusations that he has shown too much profile and not enough courage. Expect Gore to parade the economy around like a show pony, arguing -- perhaps convincingly -- that it's so very, very pretty only because of the administration's controversial budget bill of 1993.

There is one other item of ammunition Bradley may have the opportunity to use in a salvo against Gore -- the U.S. military presence in the Balkans. It's an issue that furthers the comparison between the Bradley-Gore race and the 1968 contest between Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Robert F. Kennedy -- though Gore, to his credit, is certainly no Humphrey, and Bradley on his best day isn't RFK.

On the stump, Bradley talks about the importance of not undercutting our troops by questioning what they're doing there -- after which he questions what they're doing there. "It's always better to figure out how you're going to get out before you go in," he says to reporters after the Manchester event. "Our strategic relationships with Russia and with China are far more important than what happens in the Balkans," says the eight-year veteran of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Bradley was fairly dovish in the Senate, voting against authorizing the use of force in the Persian Gulf "at that time," he emphasizes, because he wanted to give sanctions more of an opportunity to work. And for all of Gore's domestic caution, Bradley is far more cautious than the veep about exercising military force, feeling it's only justified "when our national interest is affected and our values are in play." Kosovo involves the latter, he implies, but not the former. While he withholds major criticism of the NATO mission, he does ask me -- rhetorically more than anything else -- "What is the national interest there?"

Just as McCain has distinguished himself among a field of waffling and isolationist GOP contenders by being a strong internationalist, so too Bradley may come to stand as the anti-war Democrat. As the United States becomes even more mired in the Balkans, it is certainly more than possible that American soldiers will start coming home in bags. Though it is way too early to predict, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Gore -- whose father lost his Senate seat largely because of his opposition to the Vietnam War -- may see his candidacy damaged for the opposite reason.

On the other hand, Bradley's pragmatism may end up seeming like the "indifference" Elie Weisel recently warned against in a speech at the White House. In Hanover, Bradley was asked by a Dartmouth student if he really meant to argue that our country's relationships with China and Russia are truly "more important" than putting an end to "ethnic cleansing." Bradley's answer -- essentially, "yes" -- didn't exactly draw applause. In fact, for all of Bradley's newfound personal warmth, it sounded rather cold.

Next page | Candidate Bradley: "Bad for the Republicans"