Can Bradley Catch Up?

This week Bill Bradley makes his first trip to New Hampshire as an announced candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. "But I'm not going to do a big event," says the former Senator. No barnstorming rallies or blowout fund raisers for him. Nothing that would feel like a...campaign. Instead, Bradley's schedule is dotted by quiet coffees with supporters and the occasional radio call-in show. A great deal of his time will be spent with students. And of course the former Knick will get in some basketball, again with children.

While this is all charming and laid back, it may also be insane. New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary is crucial, and for months Al Gore has waged all-out war to win it--ladling out federal largesse and making enough calls to the party faithful to put a telemarketer to shame. But while the Vice President lines up votes and money, Bradley remains a cipher, a candidate with no organization, even in battleground states like New Hampshire and Iowa. Democrats say they have little sense of him or his message. A new TIME/CNN poll shows Gore leading Bradley 44% to 12% among Democrats, with 54% of overall respondents saying they don't know who Bradley is (Dick Gephardt has better name recognition). Political operatives wonder how Bradley expects to raise the $20 million he needs to take on Gore. They wonder if he's running for President--or Vice President. The idea makes him giggle. "I've always preferred to be the underdog," he says, arguing that it's early yet. By spring, he's sure, he'll have money and foot soldiers.

What's surprising isn't that Bradley needs a groundswell but that he's not watering his grassroots. "Do you go to the prom with the guy who asks you three times or the one who never calls?" asks Jeff Woodburn, Democratic chairman in New Hampshire, a state where 75% of party officials are expected to commit to the hyperattentive Gore. Bradley says his long silence was not so much about snubs as about soul-searching. And his staff believes his ruminations will help him find ways to inspire voters--people who don't belong to the party machine, regular people who can see past the thrumming economy, who aren't feeling rosy. It's an unusual, even heretical tactic.

Then there is the question of money. In Bradley's corner are heavyweights like Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, and Len Riggio, the chairman of Barnes and Noble. Jane Eisner is rumored to be coming aboard, most likely as a proxy for her husband Michael, the Disney czar--a close Bradley friend who must stay neutral because Disney owns a federally regulated broadcast network, ABC. But support for Bradley is still unformed enough that host names won't be printed on the invitations to his March fund raiser in New York City. And with Gore clinching most traditional donors, Bradley has been forced to depend on the untried millions who have never given. It's another valiant but perhaps vain strategy, and it may explain why Bradley says he can mount a credible campaign for as little as $15 million.

Such a figure would be fine, he argues, "if I have resonance"--if his message connects. But what sweet song will make that happen? Bradley says voters thirst for something noble, that they need to know both how good we Americans are and that we could be better. His job, he says, would be to push us toward a resilience, a sense of hope that can do more good than any government program. In an era when Clinton and Gore have perfected the art of political niche marketing, such nebulous appeals are a sign of stubborn independence, at the very least. Bradley's refusal to peddle bite-size ideas may be the only major point of contrast he has with Gore. On the issues, both are centrist moderates. This leads longtime friends to wonder if Bradley is running because he hungers for it or because he feels this is his chance to live up to expectations. He claims the fires are stoked. "When Lincoln says he's going to run, he says, 'The taste is in my mouth,'" quotes Bradley. "That's how I feel."

With so much work to be done, Bradley seems preternaturally calm. It may be instructive to know that in college sports he was famous for something called his "hope pass." With his back to the court or in free fall and his teammates moving fast, Bradley would send the ball flying, his instincts telling him that when the ball came down, there'd be a man there to catch it. More often than not, he was right. And so Bradley's calm--and perhaps Gore's fear--rests on the underdog's belief that the American people will be waiting in the spot to which he throws his last long shot.