Speaking Without Words

I covered Tom Bradley, on and off, for more than 20 years but never really knew him.

He was a stoic, his face seldom reflecting pleasure or pain. He was the same in the best and worst of times. He might go for hours in silence, not speaking unless someone spoke to him.

My decades on the Bradley beat were a struggle to get him to say something provocative or at least mildly newsworthy and to break through the stoic’s mask.

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We’d spend a day in a car, traveling through the city, or on a plane, riding across the state or to Washington. I would chatter away with his aides, exchanging political dirt. Bradley ignored us, as if we were annoying children.

I’d try to think of funny things to say to make him laugh and get a conversation started. Or I fell back on sports, especially college football, a consuming interest for the ex-UCLA Bruin.

Unlike the rest of the ‘70s and ‘80s political crowd, he never drank much. I only saw him high once, during his 1986 campaign for governor.

He had given a successful speech and that evening the campaign party flew to Lake Tahoe for an early morning event the next day. After landing, we all went out to dinner and the mayor had a few glasses of wine. He took over as master of ceremonies, making fun of the reporters, joking and finally going across the hall and joining a wedding party, to the surprised delight of the bride and groom.

His Tahoe escapade--at least it was an escapade for him--was so rare that those of us who were present talked about it for years afterward.

Mostly it was much more like the hot afternoon I spent chasing the mayor, desperate for a comment at a moment of civic crisis. I drove across town to the Pacific Palisades during the rush hour hoping to intercept Bradley during a walking tour of the business district there.

Nervous, sweating and disheveled from the heat, I caught up with him. He told me he was sorry I had gone to all the trouble, but he couldn’t say a thing about the crisis.

Another time, he called me to complain that one of my reporters had violated a confidentiality agreement. Aware of the circumstances, I disagreed.

There was a moment of silence before he spoke. Never, he said, will I share a confidence with you or any member of your staff. Never, never, never.

Wait a minute, mayor, I replied. You’ve never shared a confidence with me in my life. He hung up without another word.

I wasn’t surprised. Bradley didn’t try to curry favor with reporters.

He was part of a pre-PR political generation that believed deeds were more important than words.

Bradley was suspicious of rhetoric. He thought construction workers were more important than speech writers. Sitting around and philosophizing about politics and policy bored him. His politics were the opposite of today’s “politics of feeling.” To Bradley, feelings were something to be put aside.

He was a liberal but didn’t beat his breast about it, and he had a lot of contempt for some of his more soft-hearted followers.

Take, for example, the homeless. During the later years of his administration, they congregated on skid row in increasing numbers, sleeping in the doorways of businesses owned by Bradley supporters and campaign contributors.

Early one morning the cops cleared them out. Advocates for the homeless and other liberals cried out against the police. They didn’t know Bradley had personally ordered the cops to sweep through the area.

He’d been poor. He’d had tough breaks. He had persevered. He didn’t end up on the streets.

Another time, Bradley sent liberals up the wall when he talked about taking kids away from parents who were criminals or drug addicts and sending them to camps, like Boys Town.

Why, he wondered, should kids have to grow up in such homes?

Both times, he never agonized or expressed sympathy that he didn’t feel.

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I’m lonesome for his kind of politics.

I’m sick of politicians feeling my pain or making tear-jerking speeches about their family’s troubles. I don’t want to see another commercial starring a politician bragging about his familial virtues. I don’t want to know about any politician’s inner life or underpants.

No, I never really knew Tom Bradley. I didn’t have to.