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"He's going to have to hit a sitting jump shot"
Bob Kerrey talks about why -- against the odds -- he endorsed Bill Bradley for president.
By Jake Tapper
[08/06/99]

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In a signed affidavit, Bush claims he knew nothing about events in the so-called "funeral-gate" scandal, and appeals to a Texas court to keep him off the witness stand.
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By Jake Tapper
[08/04/99]

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Bill Clinton's personal character may leave a lot to be desired, but on the yardstick of political character Kerrey and Bradley have often come up short. There is no denying Bradley's allure as a candidate. As a senator he devoted a great deal of time to studying and mastering some of the great political questions of our day -- issues like economic globalization and tax policy, which make most voters' eyes glaze over.

He also was one of the heroes of the 1986 tax reform. One observer who watched Bradley on Capitol Hill in the 1980s recently told me that Bradley delved into the intricacies of policy questions with the intensity you would expect of a lowly staffer, not a senator.

But if Bradley has a fault it is an ingrained quality of indecision and a diffidence in the face of political commitment. Today on the campaign trail he tells his audiences that he will make the fight for universal health care a centerpiece of his campaign and his presidency. But his own role in the health-care debate in 1993 and 1994 paints a different picture.

During his time in the Senate, Bradley advocated various government health-care programs. But in 1994, while supporting health-care reform in very general terms, he drove the supporters of reform to distraction by refusing to throw his considerable political clout behind any particular plan until the very last moment, and in so doing helped kill the prospects for reform.

His stance the following year was even more difficult to fathom. When the 104th Congress (that of the "Republican Revolution") was cutting every government program in sight and gearing up to shut down the government itself in late 1995, Bradley announced his retirement from the Senate with a "pox on both your houses" speech directed against both parties.

"The political debate," Bradley intoned, "has settled into two familiar ruts. The Republicans are infatuated with the 'magic' of the market and reflexively criticize government as the enemy of freedom, and the Democrats distrust the market, preach government as the answer to our problems, and [prefer] the bureaucrat they know to the consumer they can't control."

That was a funny thing for a Democrat to say on the eve of the government shutdown. It's no wonder many fellow Dems were left wondering aloud just what the hell he was thinking.

The point, of course, is not that Bradley's political bona fides depend on whether or not he supported the Clinton line during the health-care debate or the government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996. It's simply that during the big political fights that roiled the nation's politics over the last decade, Bradley could usually be found on the sidelines rather than staking out or fighting for any clear position.

You could say Bradley was pondering the issues or you could say he was just twiddling his thumbs. Whichever you choose, the fact remains he seldom put himself on the line when things got tough. That's a glaring fault in a candidate who now promises to take on the big questions with "big ideas."

By way of contrast, Bradley's other supporter in the Senate, Paul Wellstone, has frequently opposed the administration. But he's done so with clear and consistent positions on the issues -- most memorably his courageous and risky decision to vote against welfare reform on the eve of his own re-election in 1996.

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