Bradley Sees Idealism Reflected in Dean

The two men couldn’t have looked more different, the lanky basketball legend bending down to embrace the onetime wrestler, whose head just reached the taller man’s shoulder.

But when former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley offered Howard Dean his endorsement Tuesday, he saw something of himself in the Democratic front-runner and the campaign he is running.

“He has tapped into the same wonderful idealism that I saw in the eyes of Americans in 2000, and he has nourished it into a powerful force,” Bradley told audiences first in Manchester, N.H., and then later in the day at a rally in Des Moines. “His campaign offers America new hope.”

Passing on his backing to Dean was a sort of homecoming for the three-term senator from New Jersey, who used his own presidential bid four years ago to appeal to the innate optimism of Americans. He was outmatched by former Vice President Al Gore, however, and failed to win a single state in the Democratic primaries.

On Tuesday, Bradley was accompanied by his former top aide in the 2000 campaign, Matt Henshon, who took the day off from his Boston law firm to stand at Bradley’s side again. Bradley delivered his speech -- written out in longhand, as always, with his usual low drawl.

Afterward, teary-eyed supporters pressed old campaign posters and basketballs into his hands to sign.

“Senator, you’re still the best,” said Brady Carlson, a 27-year-old student from Newmarket, N.H.

For Carlson, one of the best moments of the 2000 presidential campaign was when Bradley announced during a debate that he wanted to be president “to do good.” “He always talks about the best in people,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Jeannine Grady, a religious educator in Marshalltown, Iowa, said that while she supports Dean, she has never felt the way about a candidate as she did about Bradley.

“When he talks about lofty ideals and appealing to our better spirits and that we can still look out for our neighbors -- it’s a different language than we’re used to hearing,” she said.

Whether Bradley’s backing does anything for the current Democratic front-runner remains to be seen. The former senator drew a few hundred people in each city, and as Grady noted, “a lot of us Bradley people were already with Dean.” But for the onetime NBA star, who now works for an investment bank in New York, it was a day to bask in the public eye again.

In Des Moines, he stayed long after Dean rushed off to a debate, shaking every last hand in the warehouse of the campaign’s Des Moines headquarters and taking in the compliments with his trademark sleepy grin.

“It’s good to see that people that were touched and felt a part of something still feel a sense of attachment,” Bradley said in an interview with The Times as he rode to the Des Moines airport to fly home to New Jersey.

He said he missed that kind of energy. “The way people related to you when you were a candidate ... they invested their hopes and dreams,” he said. “It was really kind of a mystical kind of connection that you don’t find in other situations.”

Bradley, who hasn’t decided how much campaigning he’ll do for Dean, demurred when asked whether he would do a joint event with Gore, who endorsed the Democratic front-runner last month.

But he did offer the candidate some advice, saying he has been impressed with Dean’s ability to pull people into politics, especially over the Internet.

“He’s got to continue to play to that strength and get people involved, to be blunt and clear about what he believes and not shave the edges,” he said. “And he’s got to maintain a sense of humor about some of the attacks.”

Oh, and one more thing: “I told him to get at least 7 1/2 or eight hours of sleep at night.” He was appalled to see Dean try to catch a nap on the flight from New Hampshire to Iowa. “You don’t sleep on planes.”