Setting Bill Free

By TAMALA M. EDWARDS

Come see Bill Bradley!" screamed the young black man standing at the corner of New York City's Bryant Park. Just blocks away, in another life, Bradley regularly packed Madison Square Garden to the rafters. But the evening before Super Tuesday, the crowd just swept past. When Bradley arrived for his last rally, the park lawn was untouched, his crescent of supporters thin enough to fit onto the concrete entry. Thankfully, night had fallen and the gas lamps burned low. One would not want a man so proud to see clearly their pitying smiles.

The next night Bradley lost every primary, and badly. As he conceded--"He won, and I lost," Bradley said simply--his wife Ernestine kept her eyes trained on him, as if hoping her gaze could soak up the sting. His young aides went into full bawl, some bending over in sobs. That it was over spilled into the smallest indignities: before Bradley was done speaking, the hotel staff began breaking down the bar and buffet.

And yet. The last few weeks, and imminent defeat, made Bradley a new man. Shoulders back and loden eyes alight, he joyfully returned to talk of a world in which everyone has health insurance, children live outside poverty and there is no soft money. As others cracked in sorrow, Bradley kept a slight smile Super Tuesday. "I knew I was going back to telling people what I believed at the end," he told TIME. "I had a great time."

Bradley, aloof and famously wary of the media, even embraced the youthful band of reporters who traveled with him at the end, joshing with them on flights. At his last press conference the questions were harsh, his answers often waspish. But Bradley added a coda. Grinning, he had an aide hand him a Tiffany's shopping bag, and he called reporters forward to hand them baby-blue boxes. Inside each was a running-shoe charm on a key chain. The gift came with tins of the lozenges he sucked on during the campaign. "Who is this guy, and what has he done with the Senator?" joked a reporter. "Too bad this guy didn't show up six months ago," answered another. "This might have been a different race."

Bradley's life has always been about winning--college All-American, Rhodes scholar, champion Knick, U.S. Senator. What is it like to be nearly 60 and fail, so soundly and so publicly, for the first time? "I once wrote, 'Defeat has a richness of experience all its own,' and that's probably true here too," he said.

But failure has given Bradley back his freedom. Since he was a boy, he has lived in the stifling hothouse of others' expectations, put up as a presidential contender while still a gawky teenager. "Are you running, Bill?" others asked. "Are you running, Bill?" he asked himself. Now he has, and it is done. "Today means the closing of a chapter," he said about those expectations. "This is a loss, and you move on." Bradley, for the first time of his adult life, may now enjoy the serenity of knowing that no one is pressing for the next move.

--By Tamala M. Edwards