Bradley Touts Good for Goodness’ Sake

As he stumps around the country, presidential hopeful Bill Bradley is rousing crowds with an inarguably idealistic speech about the simple decency of Americans.

He touts not just good works but goodness itself--one of the more unusual and intimate messages of the presidential campaign.

“Basically, I think we’re good people,” Bradley told a crowd recently at Upper Iowa University here. “And if you simply saw the goodness in your neighbor, it would be a form of connection. It would make you feel less fearful, less lonely, less isolated.”

Just minutes earlier, Bradley had been struggling to connect with the 100-some farmland folk assembled for a dinner of tuna casserole and fruit salad. But when he spoke of goodness, people stopped shifting in their chairs.

“I want to be president of the United States to use the power of that office to do good,” Bradley continued, passion replacing his usual low-key manner. “If each of us sees we have within ourselves the power to do good, and a person wants to be president in order to do good, then we have created a world of new possibilities that did not exist, and what we thought we could never do, we can.”

The audience, applauding, rose to its feet.

High-Minded Doctrine May Seem Inaccessible

But will Bradley’s message, which plays well among well-heeled voters in the Midwest and Northeast, resonate elsewhere? Many analysts wonder if this call for goodness will inspire poorer, less-educated voters, who often struggle more with tangible problems, such as paying the rent, than with a cerebral quest for spiritual wholeness.

At its core, the Democratic candidate’s philosophy about goodness embodies both the strength and weakness of his campaign--a high-minded doctrine that may seem remote and inaccessible to some key constituencies.

And doesn’t such talk, frankly, sound a bit naive?

“I don’t know if the president of the United States can make people better,” said Dave Shinkle, a 49-year-old attorney, after hearing Bradley speak in Des Moines. “It certainly is not the office now where people’s goodness is brought out.”

But for many listeners, Bradley’s belief that people have “a capacity for deeper purpose and for justice” taps into what many say is a growing appetite for spirituality in America.

“The materialism and individualism of our culture have created an empty space in the souls of a lot of people,” said Jim Wallis, author of “The Soul of Politics.” “He’s trying to speak to a genuine hunger.”

Experiences on the Road Prompted Speech

Bradley, a 56-year-old former New Jersey senator, said his belief in people’s inherent goodness has come from traveling across the country during the last three decades and meeting countless people who work, unsung and unheralded, to better their communities.

He wrote the speech during a plane trip this fall as he mulled over his experiences on the road. “I was thinking about people’s search for meaning in their lives that is deeper than the material, because I think that is a very real part of where we are in the country today,” he said.

Bradley showcased the speech at a giant fund-raiser in Madison Square Garden on Nov. 14 and has been talking about goodness practically nonstop ever since, weaving it into many addresses.

In many ways, his goodness speech illustrates the guiding principle behind his campaign, one that assumes a great potential for change in the country. He has set ambitious goals for his presidency, such as providing universal health care and eradicating child poverty.

Bradley follows a long line of American leaders who have called on the public to search inside themselves to pursue a common good.

“The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, the reason the civil rights revolution didn’t occur sooner than it did was because of the silence of good people,” Bradley says in his speech. “What I’m doing in this campaign is inviting good people to join us so that a louder voice will be heard.”

Gary Woodward, a professor of communication studies at the College of New Jersey, said the speech “builds on an old formula in presidential politics, which is to say that there’s a basic decency in the American electorate.”

Bradley’s words echo the strains of preacher-politician Jimmy Carter; the sentimentality of William Jennings Bryan; the idealism of Adlai Stevenson.

“To have someone say, ‘I want to be president to use the power of that office to do good’ is just a tremendously hopeful and optimistic thing,” said Deborah Hughes, a 41-year-old attorney, after hearing Bradley speak at a living room fund-raiser in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “You begin to think, could we have a leader who could call Americans to citizenship in a way we haven’t seen since John Kennedy? I’m very inspired by that.”

After hearing Bradley speak at a local art gallery one night, Rickie Pashler, 52, a Des Moines high school teacher, said she “began to feel the juices flowing.”

“He appeals to Americans to band together to work for a better life for others,” she said. “I felt myself responding to his call.”

Presidential candidates always recite the deeds they’ll do to better society, of course. Like Bradley, Vice President Al Gore--his rival for the Democratic nomination--and Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush have both said the nation must work harder to eliminate poverty.

But Bradley’s speech, strangely, is in some ways the most personal appeal, coming from the candidate known as the most private. He wants not only to do good but that Americans be good.

Message Seems Inherently Religious

The message seems inherently religious. In high school and college, Bradley embraced evangelical Christianity but left after growing disillusioned with what he viewed as the closed-minded viewpoints preached by many fundamentalists. During the campaign, Bradley has refused to discuss his religious beliefs, saying they should not enter the presidential race.

He, however, characterizes his goodness speech as “spiritual but not religious.”

“I think he’s touching on a deep yearning in an age replete with cynicism and darkness that seems to celebrate the sensational and the sadistic,” said Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino. “He’s hitting on a deeply felt spiritual need for goodness.”

Wallis, who teaches a class on faith and politics at Harvard University, says that Bradley’s message is reminiscent of the “moral language” sounded by King and Robert F. Kennedy.

While some conservatives also make moral arguments, Wallis said, Bradley’s speech is “not the language of righteousness but more the language of common good, of justice, of caring.”

But can Bradley win an election preaching goodness? “That’s a tough political question,” said Wallis. “What happens often is, you speak of this and a cynical media will scream ‘New Age, soft moralism.’ ”

Bradley faces another challenge in using his goodness message to reach working-class and minority voters. Recent polls show that those groups favor Gore, while Bradley’s support remains higher among affluent, well-educated whites. This divide could be a difficult hurdle to overcome in California, where about half of the Democrats who voted last year did not have college degrees.

“I think they’re more concerned about the bread-and-butter issues,” said Allan J. Lichtman, chairman of the history department at American University. “They have less luxury to focus on the lofty and more of a need to concentrate on the concrete.”

Bradley himself acknowledges that his theme naturally appeals to those who are financially secure and have more time to dwell on matters of the soul.

“People who have experienced the good economic times find themselves saying, ‘Is that all there is? What is important to me? What’s life all about?’ ” Bradley said.

But for some listeners, his goodness speech has a head-in-the-clouds feel.

“I think you have to have some reality, some bedrock,” said Betty Ludington, a retired teacher, after hearing Bradley in Hampton, N.H. “You have to show how you’re going to get the money, how you’re going to convince a Republican Congress. Give us specifics.”

Bradley’s speech “is hokey,” said her friend Ronnie Warner, 53, a retired social worker. “But we need something hokey. We’ve been down for so long.”