Gore, Bradley: Agendas Similar Yet Dissimilar

From a distance, Al Gore and Bill Bradley can look like twins: two tall, earnest, charismatically challenged Democrats who long displayed an instinct for the center.

But as the two men have filled out their campaign agendas, key differences are emerging between them--as much on questions of broad philosophy as on specific programs.

As they demonstrated during recent New Hampshire town meetings, Bradley and Gore could swap talking points on many issues. Both propose a more activist and expensive role for Washington than President Clinton has risked offering since the GOP seized control of Congress in 1994. On the other hand, neither calls for a full-fledged return to the traditional liberalism that dominated their party into the 1980s--with its emphasis on income redistribution and big centralized programs.

Each presents himself as a reformer. Yet they have grounded themselves in very different--and, in some ways, conflicting--reform traditions that point toward potentially very different presidencies.

Bradley’s agenda marries traditionally liberal views on social policy and defense issues with support for free trade, an emphasis on reforming the political process and a priority for increasing public spending in areas like health care.

Gore comes down to Bradley’s right on cultural and defense issues, gives more priority to fiscal discipline as a constraint on new spending and places far more importance than Bradley on demanding personal responsibility from those getting government aid, such as welfare recipients.

In most respects, these distinctions track the divisions between the two principal strains of reform thought that emerged among Democrats after the traditional New Deal coalition collapsed in the 1970s. On one side is the “neo-liberal” movement of the 1980s, which produced earlier presidential candidates Gary Hart and Paul E. Tsongas and helped shape Bradley. Gore, by contrast, has been influenced more by the subsequent “New Democratic” movement launched by the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and crystallized by Clinton.

“Both of them are different from the old Democrats,” says former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. “The real debate is between the DLC vision and the neo-liberal vision.”

Key Differences on Defense, Welfare

In this campaign cycle, views on issues may be secondary for many voters to broader judgments about character and capacity to lead. But on questions from how much to spend on defense to welfare reform and the federal government’s role in education, Gore and Bradley are offering Democratic voters paths that diverge--sometimes subtly, sometimes profoundly.

That’s not to say they don’t overlap on many fronts. Gore, who holds a strong lead in national polls, would mandate that all handgun owners pass a safety test and obtain a license, like a driver’s license. Bradley, who leads in polls in New Hampshire, would match that step and raise it by also requiring registration of all handguns. Each has a strong record as an environmentalist, though Gore has offered a more specific agenda, like banning all offshore oil drilling on both coasts.

Each wants to increase spending on preschool programs for very young children--Gore by a larger amount than Bradley. Both want to spend billions of dollars subsidizing health care for the uninsured--though Bradley has unveiled a larger, more expensive program than Gore.

Bradley portrays the race’s central division as a contrast in ambition. He argues that Gore offers “incremental,” small-bore initiatives, while he would pursue a few “big ideas.” “Government should do fewer things, but they should do bigger things, and they should do them more thoroughly,” Bradley said recently.

That distinction seems an imperfect guide to their differences, though. The scale of Bradley’s proposals to reform the campaign finance system and expand access to health care is more sweeping than Gore’s. But in other areas--prominently education, the environment and crime--Gore has released more detailed and ambitious proposals.

Ideology offers another compass to the differences between the two men, though it, too, isn’t perfect. The competition for hard-core Democratic voters is tugging both men toward the left. But where they differ, Bradley has most often positioned himself further to Gore’s left. That alignment isn’t inviolate: Gore has attacked Bradley from the left over his votes in the Senate for school vouchers and Ronald Reagan’s 1981 budget cuts.

Bradley More the Traditional Liberal

Still, on several fronts, Bradley begins from more traditionally liberal premises than Gore. And those can produce very different policies. Among them:

Social responsibility vs. personal responsibility: When Bradley talks about poverty, he emphasizes society’s moral obligation to alleviate it. “I speak today for justice,” he declared when introducing his child-poverty agenda. By contrast, Gore talks about reciprocal responsibility; like Clinton, he argues that while government should expand opportunity, it must also demand personal responsibility from those it helps.

Thus, Gore has pledged to maintain the work requirements and time limits on aid included in the 1996 welfare reform bill, while Bradley hasn’t ruled out the possibility of loosening them. And Gore puts much more emphasis than Bradley on the role of family breakup in perpetuating childhood poverty; last month the vice president proposed measures to toughen child support collection, help men delinquent in their payments find work and encourage absent fathers to reconnect with their families.

Public investment vs. fiscal discipline: Both have faced questions about the price tag of their agenda; Gore recently had to downsize some of his proposals to release a 10-year projection showing they would fit into the anticipated $1.1 trillion surplus. Bradley has proposed new spending that he says would cost $77 billion annually but that critics say could cost far more.

Bradley has said he considers a balanced budget important, but he’s been vague on whether he would scale back his proposals, or accept a return to deficit spending, if the surplus is smaller than expected. Gore has put more weight on fiscal discipline: he’s pledged to keep the budget in balance every year and criticized Bradley’s spending plans as excessive.

Republicans, meanwhile, are already painting both men as recidivist big-spenders.

Process reform vs. program reform: Reform of the political process is more central to Bradley’s vision than Gore’s. While Gore has embraced the leading congressional campaign finance bill--which is centered on a ban on unregulated “soft” money donations to political parties--Bradley would go much further. He wants to ban political action committee contributions to federal candidates, provide complete public financing for congressional elections and make it easier for people to vote by allowing registration on Election Day.

Gore appears more interested than Bradley in the details of reforming the way government programs work, in some cases by applying ideas typically associated with conservatives--such as pushing states to require periodic performance reviews of teachers or increasing the use of faith-based charities in social programs. The exception to this pattern is entitlements: though Bradley hasn’t put out specific proposals, he has signaled more willingness than Gore to consider such steps as raising the retirement age for Social Security or charging affluent retirees a larger Medicare premium.

Dove vs. hawk: Some of the two men’s starkest differences come over defense and foreign policy. Bradley opposed the use of force in the Gulf War, opposes any increase in defense spending and was dubious about the military intervention in Kosovo. Gore supported the Gulf War and the Kosovo intervention and wants to increase defense spending by $127 billion over the next decade.

Bradley stands mostly to Gore’s left on social policy too. Bradley wants to let gays serve openly in the military, while Gore has called for implementing the existing “don’t ask don’t tell” policy with “more compassion.” On crime, Bradley wants to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug offenders, and the penalties associated with possession or sale of crack cocaine (both of which critics say contribute to disproportionate incarceration of African Americans); Gore, by contrast, has stressed proposals to hire more police officers, require regular drug testing of anyone on parole and add a victim’s bill of rights to the constitution.

All of this reprises old left-versus-center debates among Democrats--though the differences in this race remain bounded by even Bradley’s reluctance to completely abandon the centrist formula that Clinton successfully employed.

“There is some echo of the classic ideological divisions in the party, but it takes a new form because of what Clinton accomplished, which is to show the party that you can win elections by going back to the center,” says Fordham University political scientist David Lawrence.