Bill Bradley

‘Dollar Bill� has cashed it in.

For now, anyhow.

Former New Jersey senator and pro basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley walked--no, sprinted--away from Capitol Hill last January after three terms in the world’s most (self-) important deliberative body. He’s scarcely slowed down since, assuming visiting professorships at Stanford and the University of Maryland, a consulting gig with a bank and a Saturday slot on the CBS “Evening News,� offering two-minute homilies on “America in These Times.� With all that running, it seems Bradley must be trying to get somewhere. Indeed, wherever he goes, like a full-court press, there’s the question: Is he warming up for a White House bid in 2000?

By now, Bradley is well-practiced in the ambiguous art of the nondenial denial. Put him down as most definitely, probably, maybe thinking about it.

At age 54, Bradley has spent nearly 40 years enjoying various degrees of celebrity--and upending expectations. As a high-school basketball star bursting out of Missouri, he turned down dozens of athletic scholarships to pay full tuition at Princeton. Spurning pro basketball upon graduation, the All-American accepted a Rhodes scholarship for two more years of study at Oxford. As a star forward with the New York Knicks, Bradley was noted for two things: his quick-release shot and his tight-fistedness with a buck. Hence, “Dollar Bill,� as in still has the first one he ever made.

When he quit pro basketball, Bradley shunned advice to think small and aimed directly for a seat in the U.S. Senate. He won the 1978 campaign and two more that followed, the last one in 1990 by an embarrassingly close margin to a virtual unknown, Christine Todd Whitman, now New Jersey’s governor.

If political near-death was sobering, it also proved exhilarating, even liberating. Bradley walked away from the Senate, he says, when he realized he had mastered the job and greater challenges beckoned.

In a recent hourlong conversation, Bradley again defied expectations. Far from the persona he projects on the stump--wood being the apt metaphor--he was engaging and funny, even goofy, cutting up with impressions and a cockeyed stream of sidelong observations.

Bradley and his wife of 23 years, Ernestine Schlant Bradley, a professor of German and comparative literature at New Jersey’s Montclair State University, have a daughter, Theresa Anne, 21, who attends New York University.

In a famous New Yorker magazine piece, back when Bradley starred at Princeton, he spoke of his extrasensory perception on the basketball court. “You develop a sense of where you are,� he said then, explaining how he didn’t even need to see the hoop before sinking a shot. He’s chosen that title for his TV essays.

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Question: Your commentaries are called “Where We Are.� So where are we?

Answer: On the economic level, people look at the big numbers--growth, inflation, unemployment, productivity--and they say we’re in pretty good shape. We’ve lived through a period of downsizing, however, where we’ve lost 8 million jobs and, in roughly the same time, created 30 million new jobs. The jobs are frequently at lower wages and fewer benefits. Where we are as a country is trying to figure out how we continue the economy on its stable growth path but have the fruits of that economic path shared by a greater number of people.

On the social level, we are still bedeviled by race relations in America and the need to reach across the racial divide and assert the common-sense notion that we’re all in this together . . . . On the social front as well, we are at a time when America’s families have had some dramatic changes . . . . There is a shortage of time between parent and child and that raises questions for society at large of how do we help parents who are caught in circumstances that would test the very best of us? How do we help parents help their children?

On the political front . . . the need for democratic reform is evident to anyone who looks at the political process, and particularly the need for campaign-finance reform.

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Q: Where do you think Americans are on a scale of relative contentedness, if one end is “malaise� and the other “Glory Hallelujah!�

A: I saw a recent survey that said most people feel better about their economic circumstances than they did a couple of years ago, but they think the country’s going to hell in a handbasket . . . . Americans are basically optimistic people. They believe character determines--and hard work produces--success. And they’ve seen how it has in the last two years, so they feel better. And, yet, the messages they get from the media about how the country is doing are frequently negative, and those negative messages have an impact on how people feel about that part of the world that is beyond their daily experience.

. . . One of the things you find is that people who’ve been downsized don’t seem to blame the company, but tend to make it their personal challenge. They have a belief they’ll get another job. And, indeed, in an economy that’s generating a lot of jobs, you get another job. But often it’s for less pay, fewer benefits. And, therefore, you find people who’ve got enough income, but the quality of life is not quite as good as it was. And the uncertainty is quite significant in terms of health care, in terms of pensions. Therefore . . . they conclude that they’re better off than they were a couple of years ago . . . but they see where they are and how hard they have to work for what they get, and they ask themselves, “Well, how long is this going to last?�

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Q: The topics you covered in your essays--humility, dealing with personal tragedy, the popularity of Elvis Presley--seem explicitly nonpolitical. Are you through with politics?

A: When I left the Senate, I said I was leaving the Senate but I wasn’t leaving public life . . . that I was leaving to do other things that I thought were in the public interest. One of the things that I set out to do was learn where this technological revolution and globalization process was taking our economy and what will be its impact on middle-class Americans? And I left to try to build a grass-roots movement for campaign-finance reform, and to try and figure out new and different ways to make racial unity a common-sense notion in America. And, finally, to think through more clearly what is America’s role in the world.

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Q: Which brings us to 2000 and whether you’ll run for president.

A: I haven’t ruled anything out for the year 2000. But that is not where my energies are flowing right now. When you talk about humility and how you deal with grief, that’s not exactly on the Washington agenda in terms of what amendment’s being offered tomorrow.

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Q: Supposedly you asked Bruce Hornsby to compose a song for you for the 2000 campaign. Would you hum a few bars?

A: That’s news to me. To compose a song for the 2000 campaign? Bruce Hornsby’s a good friend of mine and he has done some appearances for me . . . . If there is [a song], it’s news to me.

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Q: During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton promised the most ethical administration in American history. Has he delivered?

A: Well, Jimmy Carter’s administration was probably the most ethical ever in history. I think the president has done well in some areas. Some areas I disagree on. There have been some problems, which I think he’s admitted. I have a basic rule of thumb that I’ve followed for many years in Washington: Whenever there are these scandals or scandalettes, . . . you either try to know everything about it, or you don’t bother knowing much about it at all . . . . After six or seven years in the Senate, I made the decision of not knowing everything about something unless I had to make a decision. And that’s kind of the way I’ve looked at this in the last couple of years.

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Q: Do you think you’re like most Americans?

A: What I sense is that people feel generally depressed by the information, by the constant stories. And I think the defense that “everybody does this� has the effect of devaluing everybody in politics.

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Q: In one commentary, you noted that close to 50% of Americans believe they’ll see Elvis before they see campaign-finance reform. What does this say about politicians delivering on campaign-finance reform, or about peoples’ expectations of what government can deliver?

A: It says that people, basically, are very skeptical about people in public life . . . . The failure of campaign-finance reform up to now only underlines a couple of things that I’ve been saying for a couple of years: The only way you’re going to get fundamental campaign-finance reform is . . . when two things happen outside the Beltway. One of them is a grass-roots movement.

. . . The other thing you need is some segments of American power--the financial community, the business community, the university community, the religious community--to conclude that the way money plays in politics is not serving the long-term interest of the country, nor their interest. And, therefore, add their voices that have incredible clout to the call for campaign-finance reform . . . . And with any big reform, you need a president who’s going to make this the top of the agenda, or at least among the issues at the top of the agenda.

. . . [At the grass-roots level] there are two major reasons for individuals to step forward. One is democracy is endangered. We have one-person, one-vote in America. And, yet, because of the role of money in politics, some people have more influence than others. And, second, people have to face up to the fact they’re paying higher taxes now because of the way we finance political campaigns . . . . Loopholes and subsidies suddenly appear . . . in some cases [for] those who’ve made the contributions. If we had fewer loopholes, fewer subsidies . . . you could have lower taxes overall.

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Q: Have there been any moments, twinges, when you wish you were back in the Senate?

A: No, . . . I had a wonderful 18 years . . . . But, for me, I realized that it was time to move on . . . . Jumping into all these other activities has pushed me forward and I have never looked back.

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Q: Race relations have long been a concern of yours. In fact, back in the spring of 1992, you called for the sort of dialogue that the president sought to precipitate earlier this year. What do you think about the dialogue that has, or has not, unfolded so far as a result of his initiative?

A: I think there is more dialogue because of the president’s initiative and applaud him . . . . At the same time, I think it’s important that these conversations take place outside the presidential glare as well . . . . We have to solve it for ourselves, one-by-one, by reaching across the racial divide and engaging somebody of a different race. Not only in a candid dialogue, but multiracial action toward a common objective.

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Q: You’re in the state that passed Proposition 209, which can be seen as a gut-level response to this issue and the notion that affirmative action went too far.

A: The issue of race is deeper, richer in potential as well as . . . sadder than a narrow debate about affirmative action would connote . . . . The premise we have a colorblind society, that’s another way of saying we have no more discrimination. And, yet, you don’t have to talk to too many people to find examples of discrimination. And that means you ultimately have to come to terms with that. For those people who don’t want affirmative action, then they should be at the forefront with specific remedies to existing discrimination. That would make their case stronger. But they’re not.

. . . There have been some things put forward in the name of affirmative action that are not affirmative action. When you give tax benefits to the minority owners of radio stations and television stations, that’s not affirmative action. That’s tax giveaways. You have to be able to pull back from things that are excesses and you have to be able to move forward with the general proposition that this country should make its future open to everyone.

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Q: Any moments, any twinges, when you wish you were still in the NBA?

A: Yeah. In the fifth and seventh game of the finals, when the money’s on the line and a team either pulls together or doesn’t, I’d like to be in the middle of the action.