Won’t Be Part of Ticket, Sen. Bradley Insists : Politics: New Jersey Democrat admonishes both parties to address racial strife. He tells Los Angeles audience he wants to serve his full term.

Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey took himself out of the running for a vice presidential bid on Monday at the same time he rebuked Republicans and Democrats alike for failing to acknowledge the depth of the nation’s racial problems.

In recent days, Democrats trying to handicap the vice presidential sweepstakes have seized upon Bradley, a 13-year Senate veteran who has increasingly taken on a national role in discussing racial issues.

But after a Town Hall address in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, the senator said he would not be among those vying for the second slot on the 1992 Democratic ticket.

“When I ran for reelection in 1990, I said I’d serve my full six-year term and couldn’t think of anything that would change that,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons that I didn’t run for President, and it clearly would apply to vice president.”

Bradley’s formal address touched not on presidential politics but on continuing racial misunderstandings that he contends have been exacerbated by political failure.

“Both political parties have contributed to the problem,” he told about 100 attendees at the Town Hall luncheon. “Republicans have played the race card in a divisive way to get votes--remember Willie Horton--and Democrats have suffocated discussion of self-destructive behavior among minority populations in a cloak of silence and denial.

“The result is yet another generation has been lost,” Bradley said. “We cannot afford to wait longer.”

Bradley offered no specifics about the “cloak of silence,” but his remarks suggested that Democrats have been reluctant to criticize the behavior of individual minorities for fear that the criticism would be interpreted as racism.

After his address, Bradley credited the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, for trying to “reach out to the minority population.”

But he was less sure about what tactics the Democratic nominee would pursue in the general election, when the electorate is proportionately more white than in the Democratic primaries.

“This issue has to be raised,” he added. “You have to be explicit that you’re going to do things because it’s critical to our country’s future.”

Bradley began his public assessments of America’s racial environment last summer, when he demanded from the floor of the Senate that President Bush use his office to unite Americans.

On Monday, he said that it “rings hollow” to suggest to young minority residents of America’s cities that government could actually help them.

“To them, government is at best incompetent--look at the schools, the streets, the welfare department--(and) at worst corrupt,” Bradley said.

He called for a broad spectrum of social and legal changes, including community policing, stern punishment for drug dealers, gun control and the establishment of group-parenting homes to house young pregnant women and mothers until their children are a year old.