A Sense Of Where You're Not

By Eric Pooley/Davenport, Iowa

For one sunny day last week, aides to Bill Bradley could still persuade themselves that their man had a good chance to win the nomination from Al Gore. After a lousy start--aimless events in New Hampshire, a botched debate in Iowa, sliding poll numbers just about everywhere--Bradley enjoyed an epiphany of sorts on Wednesday, and some of his advisers thought it might be the turning point he needed. It happened in New Hampshire, when a working mother with no health insurance described how her son had come down with strep throat and then apologized to her as she wrote out a check at the doctor's office. "It might seem like a small thing to you," she said, "but as a mother, I felt terrible my son should even have to consider that."

As he listened to her, Bradley's eyes filled with tears. The woman's story reminded him of why he had entered the race to begin with and got him fired up all over again. And so on Thursday in Iowa, this most phlegmatic of candidates started bearing down hard, putting real passion into his stump speech, winning cheers and laughter, getting people to promise to stand up for him at the caucuses on Jan. 24. If winning in Iowa still seemed out of the question--Gore was 20 points ahead--the Bradley team could dream about a late surge in New Hampshire and beyond, and feel sure that it had regained that elusive campaign rhythm.

Then, just as quickly, it fell apart. Wondering why Bradley's public schedule had been so light earlier in the week, ABC News correspondent Jackie Judd asked a simple question: Had Bradley experienced any more episodes of heart arrhythmia, the chronic (but not life-threatening) irregular heartbeat he'd made public last December? The answer, of course, was yes. Four times in the past month his heart had "flipped out" of its natural rhythm, as Bradley describes it, then "flipped back in." On its face, this wasn't an earthshaking revelation--the episodes had corrected themselves without medical intervention--and no one argued that the condition should disqualify him. And yet the press corps flipped out as well. The questions started coming and kept coming for days.

Reporters had reason to be worked up. They resented that Bradley, who talks all the time about being "as straight as I possibly can be" with voters, had not come forward about these episodes. He insisted they had zero impact on his schedule. Yet Bradley had to acknowledge that they had been coming far more frequently as the campaign heated up. And though he tried to joke his way past the crisis, blaming the episodes on caffeinated soft drinks--"The answer is cream soda," he announced--it was clear that the rhythm of Bradley's heart had ruined the rhythm of Bradley's campaign.

It was a waking nightmare: a health issue that swamped the candidate's message and dominated the news just days before the first votes were to be cast. And Bradley had no one to blame for the timing but himself. By choosing not to disclose the episodes earlier, he had effectively ceded control of the issue, ensuring it would blow up whenever a reporter happened to ask.

It is a sign of Bradley's disdain for politics that his chief strategist is a man who takes pride in his own lack of political savvy. The man's name, of course, is Bill Bradley. Though Bradley once told a Senate aide, "You'll discover I don't have very good political instincts," he has been calling the strategic shots since Day One. That sounds refreshing in this age of consultants, but it hasn't been working so well. Two of his key judgments appear to have been disastrous.

The first is the time and money that he has lavished on Iowa. Though the caucus system heavily favors Gore, with his party connections and labor support, Bradley poured the maximum allowable ($2.2 million) into the state, spending 75 days there in 1999 and half of January. In closed-door strategy sessions, some of Bradley's advisers argued that this was foolish, but Bradley wouldn't budge. He'd grown up right next door in Missouri, and he just knew he could connect with Iowans. Last summer, when the Gore campaign resembled a bleary, staggering fool, Bradley and his team started dreaming big dreams about Iowa. He'd surprise Gore and the nation with the strength of his organization there, then hammer the Vice President in the Northeast. But Gore's campaign came thundering back. Even as late as December, Bradley's Iowa director, Dan Lucas, was telling reporters that his candidate might win the state. Remarks like that helped raise expectations. Anything less than a near win would be a loss.

All those days in Iowa seemed to be having an effect in New Hampshire, where Bradley had been nursing a slight lead over Gore. Bradley had stalled there in early winter, but as he looked to Iowa in January, he began to slide in New Hampshire. His state director, Mark Longabaugh, warned headquarters that Bradley had to turn his attention back East before it was too late. But maybe it already was. A new TIME/CNN poll finds that 50% of New Hampshire's likely Democratic voters support Gore and 43% back Bradley. Only a month ago, Bradley was leading Gore by 3 points, 42% to 39%. Formerly undecided voters are making up their minds and moving to Gore.

For months, of course, Team Bradley has blamed its problems on Gore's smash-mouth tactics--what Bradley calls "bald-faced misrepresentations" of his proposals. (Most folks call it The Way the Game Is Played.) The more honest Bradleyites will admit that Gore is only half the problem. The other half is Bradley. Simply put, he and his top advisers, especially campaign chairman Doug Berman and communications director Anita Dunn, failed to effectively deflect, counter and oftentimes even respond to Gore's fusillades. Throughout the fall and winter, a debate has raged inside the Bradley camp about whether and how to fight back. Lucas in Iowa, Longabaugh in New Hampshire and key players inside the campaign's West Orange, N.J., headquarters argued that passivity in the face of Gore's attacks would doom the campaign. One source who favored a more aggressive response says, "There was a not-ready-for-prime-time quality at the top of our leadership. When Gore attacked us on Medicaid and Medicare--something that had only been done against Republicans--it was a dagger coming straight at our heart. We had to find some way to blunt it, but we didn't. There was nobody on the team skilled at blasting back."

The decision to hold back was made by Bradley, who felt that responding too harshly in debates would alienate his supporters. In part, he was in a box. He'd set himself up as a better sort of politician, and the few times he slipped from his perch--clumsily attacking Gore for a 15-year-old pro-tobacco vote or claiming that Gore introduced Willie Horton to the world during the 1988 Democratic primaries--Bradley was roundly criticized. (That he chose to attack Gore on two of his Administration's strongest issues--tobacco and race--was just another sign of Bradley's tactical deficiencies.) But it's also true that Bradley really did (and still does) want to run a different kind of campaign. Aside from those two lapses, he has run his race the way he said he would--staying positive, pointing out problems and offering "bold" solutions in a mild and philosophical way that resonates deeply with a vocal minority of Democrats.

During an interview with TIME last Friday, as he led a bus caravan across eastern Iowa--moving through the most liberal part of the state, enjoying some boisterous rallies--Bradley was, as usual, impossible to read. He was either hoping the world might yet come around to his way of thinking or resigned to the prospect that it would not, or both. What was unmistakable was his Zenlike calm. "The key thing is to find ways to make the positive powerful enough that it absorbs the negative energy that comes from politics as usual, which is what we're dealing with," he told TIME. "The country doesn't become a better place if all you do is give the public yet another picture of two cats fighting in the alley."

This cat looked ready for a nap. Rolling across the snowy plains, reclining in his chair, he simply didn't bother striking the pose of the combative candidate. A friend says, "Bill thinks a lot of what he's supposed to do on the trail is bull___." From that attitude springs the best and worst of the man--small transcendent moments like Wednesday's emotional health-care event and the cranky, can't-be-bothered-with-this attitude that makes people wonder why they should bother with him.

Now he was trying to convey passion in a voice devoid of it. "I'm actually invigorated by today," he said. "I'm feeling great...This is a good part of the campaign because we're finding a rhythm. Sometimes you miss a shot; you go on." But sometimes you miss a shot, and the game's over. As he wrote in one of his books, "One errant pass, one shot that bounces off the rim, and a game (a team, your life) can be changed." Asked about this cold fact, he said those outcome-altering moments come only "at the end of the game." A reporter told him gently that a lot of political people think the game is almost over and that he's running out of steam. "Running out of steam as a result of what?" he asked. "This is the first time the voters have had their say."

Politics can always surprise you. Bradley could do better than expected in Iowa. With or without a good showing there, he could rebound and win New Hampshire. He would then have every right to take his crusade to the 21 states that have primaries and caucuses on March 7 and 14. But he told TIME that he would keep going even if he lost by a wide margin in New Hampshire. If that happens, of course, he will come under enormous pressure to concede for the good of the party. But Bradley compares the primary schedule to a movie. Iowa and New Hampshire "are like the previews," he says, and the March contests "are the feature." The five-week gap between New Hampshire and March 7, he insists, "essentially makes it a whole new campaign." He's looking beyond New Hampshire. After that, he says, "it's a new day."

--With reporting by Tamala M. Edwards/New Hampshire

With reporting by Tamala M. Edwards/New Hampshire