He works out at the gym, hangs out at Jamba Juice (favorite drink: Lo-Cal Motion) and often gets recognized striding across White Plaza or the Quad. But Bill Bradley’s not just another Big Man On Campus. A U.S. senator from 1979 to 1997 and a pro basketball player for 10 years before that, Bradley is finishing a year as the Payne Distinguished Professor at Stanford’s Institute for International Studies. He is a graduate of Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and he earned high marks in the Senate for his work on tax reform, trade and racial issues. A few weeks ago, Bradley spoke with Stanford Editor Bob Cohn about Washington, basketball and a possible White House bid. Excerpts:
Stanford: Let’s just get this question out of the way: Are you running for president in 2000?
Bradley: I haven’t ruled it out. When I left the Senate, I said I was leaving the Senate but not public life. I’ll make a decision sometime before the early part of next year.
What are the factors you’re weighing as you decide?
The most important thing is to believe that you can add appreciably to public welfare. That’s the main threshold.
In the meantime, there’s this political cottage industry devoted to speculating about whether you’ll run…
I don’t think there’s much of a cottage industry.
Well, there were stories in Newsweek and Time in just the past two weeks. What do you make of the attention?
I don’t know. I have been in public life for 30 years. In that sense, I’m not an unknown quantity.
You spent 18 years in the Senate. Now you’ve had a couple of years to look back on the experience. Do you have any new thoughts?
Being a United States senator is the best elective job in the world. It’s like being a perpetual graduate student – you can learn every day. And you can actually make certain things happen, you can see things change in people’s lives because of what you’ve done.
You’re famous for having written your memoirs with No. 2 pencils. What have you learned after a year in Silicon Valley?
I took such a ribbing from so many of my friends about how I wrote the book that, while I was still in the Senate, I decided I’d get a computer teacher. I was about the fourth senator to have a website, and we were getting 300 to 400 e-mails a week by the end of my term. This experience out here has only deepened my appreciation and understanding for technology and its impact on our lives – particularly information technology but also biotechnology.
What do you find interesting or unusual about Silicon Valley?
What exists here in the valley is a real meritocracy. It is a world of flat organizations. Hierarchy is not in. It is a place that understands that failure once sometimes leads to success the next time. It is also a place where universities are integrally a part of the whole engine of dynamism.
You talked in a recent speech about a new American narrative based on a civil society. What do you mean by that?
As we come to the turn of the millennium, we have new circumstances that we’re confronting: technology, globalization, lone superpower status, the plight of children in America, what I think is the spiritual revival that’s going on, people losing confidence in the political process as a way to deal with some of these problems. With these new circumstances, we need a new story that gives people some idea of where we’re headed and what their role is in all of this. That’s the search for an American narrative.
Do you think people feel more secure if they know how they fit into a larger landscape?
There’s no question that it’s essential. Otherwise you’re just kind of drifting out there seeing a part of the world – your part of the world – and one of the things that we have shown in our better moments is an ability to see things whole as opposed to our narrow segment of life. Your segment is part of a mosaic, part of a larger picture.
This sounds like a narrative that will need a novelist, not a nonfiction writer.
When you talk about running for president, one of the things you need is a feel for the country. People have said to me, “You sound like Walt Whitman.” I’ll take that comparison. I’m flattered by that comparison.
You’ve likened the national mood to a religious revival. What do you see out there, what sort of spiritual yearning?
Turn on your television and watch the ads. Go to a bookstore and look at the best-selling books. Increasingly the ads have a spiritual connotation, and increasingly the books are spiritual in nature.
You’ve always been outspoken on the issue of race. Any new thoughts on how to improve racial relations?
We need dialogue, and we need action in a multiracial setting. The dialogue has to be candid, and it has to be premised on the view that racial unity is a good thing. We have to get the baggage of the past on the table. Then you can realize that there’s a whole lot that you share with the person you’re in dialogue with – more than what divides you.
What do you mean by action in a multiracial setting?
You have to engage with someone of a different race in a common project. That could be in a church, it could be an effort to clean a park, it could be an effort to establish an after-school program for kids.
What about all those Americans who aren’t racists but are holding down two jobs and are too busy to devote half a day a week to clean up a park?
In that case, it’s important to seek to understand as much as possible. If you’re in a multiracial workplace and everybody in the workplace is a workaholic, well, you’re going to learn about race while you’re at work.
You’ve said that money is distorting democracy. Is there progress being made on campaign finance reform, or is it unrealistic to expect change from the very people who benefit from the system?
In the summer of 1994, President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich shook hands and gave a solemn pledge to the American people that they would get campaign finance reform. Two things happened after that. One was the excesses of the 1996 campaign; the second is the post-campaign failure to actually make anything happen. You’d have to say that it’s been an abysmal failure.
And if it doesn’t happen now, when prosecutors and the media are investigating abuses, when will it ever happen?
The problem is the prosecutors haven’t aired it. Given a choice between sex and money, the prosecutors sometimes choose sex – and the media always choose sex.
You raised $12 million in your 1990 campaign. Are you the best person to be out front on this issue?
In 18 years, I ran three campaigns. I raised money. I also believe that there’s a sense of urgency here because there are a lot of good people in Congress who are caught in a bad system, and they have to answer for excesses and suspicions that in many cases are unfounded.
If you do run for president, won’t you be challenged to reject soft money? Will you just say what President Clinton says – no unilateral disarmament?
The question is what you lead with. If you come to the issue after a campaign in which you already have a set of problems, that’s less credible than if you said from the beginning that this will be a point issue.
A Los Angeles Times writer recently described you as “funny” and “goofy” – in contrast, he wrote, to the sober image you typically project. Do people have the wrong impression about your personality?
I have no idea. I’ve always thought I was funny. I’ve always been a riot. I mean I could walk into a room and people could crack up just at the way I was dressed.
You wrote in your 1996 book about the difficulty you have connecting with large crowds.
I think that that’s history.
How did you fix it or change it?
Well, you just go do it.
Let’s talk about basketball…
Some people might not think it’s history. Some people might feel that there’s been no progress at all. That my delivery is still wooden. [He parodies a speaker with an excessively wooden delivery.] And that I rarely crack a smile talking about very heavy subjects.
I’m only sorry this is a print interview and not audio or video. Anyway, a few weeks ago, at the end of the Stanford men’s basketball season, you said you hadn’t felt this close to a team since you played for the Knicks.
This is the first team that I’ve been into since I left the Knicks in 1977. It was a terrific experience for me even though my involvement was modest. It reawakened a passion for the game that had kind of lessened or disappeared over the last 20 years.
You’re also writing a book on basketball…
It’s very interesting. I think the book will have a slightly different flavor because of the Stanford experience.
I’ve read that the book bemoans how “flashy” the game has become, especially at the pro level.
The issue to me is not flash. The issue is the number of passes that take place before a basket and the amount of movement on the floor by all five players. I think the three-point rule has a tendency to create a pick and roll on one side with six guys standing on the other side. That’s not movement. That’s a problem for someone of my age.
How do you explain that basketball has become the most popular sport in America – more popular than baseball – even as the headlines are dominated by the likes of Dennis Rodman and Latrell Sprewell?
It’s because of Michael Jordan – and Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, a little bit of Kareem. That’s how this happened. The NBA chose to highlight superstars who were basically good people. And Michael Jordan of course is the best player ever to play, and therefore people realize they’re watching something that they might not see again.
You’ve said that you still like to shoot baskets, but only alone. Why is that?
It allows me to return to the time of my life when playing alone was an everyday experience. It’s a nice memory.
