When Bill Bradley was a senior in high school in Missouri, the future senator decided to become a Blue Devil. He was recruited by then-basketball coach Vic Bubas, and many of the Duke faithful were hoping he would lead the basketball team to its first national championship. Four days before the freshman class was to convene in Durham, however, a host of factors-among them a broken foot and a trip to Europe-changed Bradley's mind, and he opted for Princeton instead.
"It was the congruence of those two things. One was my world without basketball-which was an exaggeration, but nonetheless, a feeling I had never had before," Bradley said in an interview before speaking Wednesday at the Regulator Bookshop, "and that Princeton had all these Rhodes Scholars, which I wasn't quite sure what that was. It seemed to me just a scholarship which you got to go to Oxford. The combination of those two things came together in that last weekend, and I made the switch."
But Bradley admitted that his final decision was by no means an easy one. "I felt a great deal of respect and admiration for the coach of Duke at that time, Vic Bubas," Bradley said. "And so it was a very difficult thing for me."
Bradley returned to Durham Wednesday to promote the paperback version of his memoir, "Time Present, Time Past." Many members of the press have accused the former New Jersey senator of using his recently-published book to position himself for a possible presidential run in 2000, a charge similar to the one leveled against former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell.
Bradley, who calls himself an "inveterate journal-keeper," said his motives for publishing his memoirs lie elsewhere.
After ending his basketball career at age 33, Bradley chronicled his athletic experiences in his first book, "Life on the Run." Following his retirement from the Senate in early 1996 after three terms, Bradley felt it was once again time to offer his reflections on the political chapters of his life.
"You always try within the experience of living intensely to get time to reflect on and get some perspective on it," Bradley said. "And then every so often, like every 20 years, you find the words to express those reflections, and finding the words to express the reflections closes the experience. That's what happened in basketball and that's what happened in the Senate."
When Bradley began writing his most recent book four years ago, he was certain he would run for re-election to the Senate. During the writing process, however, he realized it was time to move on to other things when his memoirs were completed.
"Being a senator is the best elected job in the world, but there are other things that I wanted to do but couldn't do if I was in the Senate spending 13 or 14 hours a day in caucuses, subcommittees and committees and going back and forth between states," Bradley said. "My record is three round trips to New Jersey in one day."
Fritz Mayer, a professor of public policy at the University and a former Bradley staffer who worked on foreign policy in 1992-93, said the former senator is still undecided about entering the 2000 presidential race.
"He'd like to play a role in the country, and whether that's going to be president or not-I don't think he's decided," Mayer said. "He'd like to be visible and he'd like to have an impact on the public discussion about all those issues that he cares about."
Bradley has recently accepted distinguished teaching positions at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies and the University of Maryland's Academy of Leadership in an effort to educate people about issues such as race relations and campaign finance reform.
"With that part of my life, I wanted to come to terms with some of the thorniest issues that face our country," Bradley said. "In fact, one of the reasons I left the Senate was to have more time to grapple with those issues."
"Racial healing" as Bradley calls it, has always been one of his foremost concerns. He devotes an entire chapter, entitled "Across the Great Divide," to that subject in his book. An affirmative action supporter, he said he would like to end the type of racial self-segregation that occurs daily on college campuses.
"[Self-segregation is] kind of a defensive reaction to the absence of real dialogue and racial healing. I think that the only way that you achieve racial healing is by engaging somebody of a different race in a candid dialogue-and I mean really a dialogue with real candor-and then doing something together, taking some action," Bradley said. "It's very uncommon in America for people of different races who have social interactions that are deeper than superficial."
The oft-debated topic of campus finance reform also tops Bradley's list of concerns. He referred to the 1976 Supreme Court decision, which ruled that limitations on campaign contributions restrict that candidate's freedom of speech, as "ludicrous."
"On this issue I think you have to be radical and not marginal," Bradley said. "I think the key is to confront that issue up front and do so by doing a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress, states and municipalities to limit the total amount of money spent on a political campaign."
Bradley noted that aspects of his ideal campaign finance legislation would include strict funding limits in primary elections, equal funding for all parties in general elections and free access to public airwaves. He said the McCain-Feingold bill, currently under review in Congress, falls short in addressing these points and, therefore, is "getting the cold shoulder."
"Politicians believe there is no downside to opposing campaign finance reforms because the public is ultimately not interested," Bradley said. "They don't see the connection. People feel that politicians are controlled by special interest money and this leads to a kind of cynicism that pollutes any effort that a politician might make on behalf of the people."
Yet Bradley, unlike most of his fellow politicians, entered the political arena with a celebrity status already intact. During Bradley's first senatorial campaign in 1978, his experience and exposure as a professional athlete-he played 10 years for the New York Knicks-boosted his aspiring political career and increased his audience.
"I had been on people's television sets in New Jersey on Wednesday and Friday nights for a decade and they had seen me in some fairly pressurized circumstances and I think they had formed an impression of me-and thought they knew me more as a human being and not simply as a political candidate," Bradley said. "This put 300 people in a room as opposed to 100. If I had something to say, more people knew about it, and it was real advantage in that sense."
His reputation as an athlete, however, only carried him so far once he reached the Senate. Bradley said he was forced to prove himself up to the task because many other senators had also excelled in other areas of life.
After a successful 10-year career as a professional athlete and an 18-year run as a respected Democratic member of the U.S. Senate, Bradley now stands at a crossroads in his life as he, along with the rest of the country, contemplates his future. To that end, his memoirs provide the American people with a glimpse into both his future and his personality.
"A lot of people think of him as a distant figure, and there are times when he comes across that way, but the book is stories where he's connected with people and things that touched him," Mayer said. "Each story is sort of an insight, and it shows the kind of person he is."
More than 30 years after he chose Princeton over Duke, Bradley said he does not regret his decision. Bradley, who spoke at Duke last year and at its commencement in 1993, jokingly remarked that former Duke president and U.S. Senator Terry Sanford did not either. "He told me, 'It's a good thing you did go to Princeton, because you never would have beaten Jesse Helms.'"
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