How Al Came Back To Life

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Gore's team--and more than a few members of Bradley's--was mystified by the challenger's decision to devote much of January to Iowa. The 17 days Bradley spent there that month only helped Gore get back on top in New Hampshire. The Iowa plan was put in place early, when Bradley was riding high and thought he could beat Gore there. As a son of neighboring Missouri, Bradley was sure he could connect with Iowans and overcome Gore's labor and party support. He was mistaken. When Tim Russert asked Bradley during a Meet the Press debate to name the "defining moment" of his life, he replied, "When I made a decision to leave a small town in Missouri and come East and go to school at Princeton, that was what changed my life." A Bradley adviser watching from Iowa couldn't believe what he was hearing. Iowans wouldn't flock to a Princetonian. "Those people would have been happy to see their kids go to community college," the adviser says.

It was in an Iowa debate that Gore pulled off what may have been the most emblematic moment of the primary season. His staff arranged for farmer Chris Petersen to stand up in the audience as Gore blasted Bradley for his 1993 vote against an amendment providing flood-relief money to Iowa. Gore's advisers expected Bradley to point out that he had voted for the underlying bill. They were amazed when he didn't--"this debate is about the future, not the past" was all Bradley could manage--and so were Bradley's aides, who knew the candidate had rehearsed the better answer. Bradley choked, which is human. What was harder to understand was the way he ignored Petersen--as if the farmer were simply a Gore ploy and not a surrogate for Iowa voters who wanted to know if Bradley cared about them. Sixteen days later, Gore blew Bradley out in the Iowa caucuses.

By then, Bradley's New Hampshire lead was gone. He was down by 6 points with a week to go. Both candidates campaigned hard and well in New Hampshire in that last week, and Bradley closed the gap but came up 4 points short. He tried to claim a symbolic victory, but his words were drowned out by John McCain's 19-point defeat of Bush. For the next month, the McCain-Bush dogfight would command the country's attention. Bradley and Gore disappeared from view--and the invisibility meant Bradley had no chance to get back in the game.

Bradley made one last attempt to catch a wave, scrambling his schedule and putting six futile days into the nonbinding Feb. 29 Washington State primary. He also stepped up his attacks on Gore, but they seemed too little, too late and more than a bit hypocritical. The candidate who'd promised big ideas was now rooting around in the Congressional Record looking for 20-year-old votes to prove Gore had been a "conservative Democrat." Of course he found them--Gore's early opposition to federal funding for abortion and his pro-gun record in the House--but Gore had so clearly evolved since those days that voters seemed untroubled by the news. Gore (unlike Bush) had managed to make it through the primary season without straying too far from the center. And now Gore will be more than happy to tuck the "conservative Democrat" label under his belt and carry it with him into the fall, when it will be a handy way to parry G.O.P charges that he's a screaming liberal. In the end, even Bradley's attacks turned out to be one more gift to Gore.