Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley is a banker’s son from Crystal City, Missouri, who left home for Princeton, then Oxford, and eventually the New York Knicks. In 1978 he parlayed his fame as a brainy basketball player—few athletes had a more adoring press—into a seat in the U.S. Senate representing New Jersey. Tax reform and race have been his biggest interests.

Bradley surprised many by declining to run for a fourth Senate term in 1996. His name was bandied about as a possible presidential candidate of a centrist third party, but he declined to run.

"I have always preferred moving to sitting still," Bradley writes in his new book, Time Present, Time Past. As a Knickerbocker, Bradley was known for his constant motion even when he didn’t have the ball; just where Bradley the citizen will move remains to be seen.

Senator Bradley was interviewed in his Capitol Hill office by TAE editors Bill Kauffman and Scott Walter.

TAE: Did playing professional basketball affect your view of racial matters?

SEN. BRADLEY: It deepened my understanding. I was a white man in a predominantly black world, and it gave me insights that I wouldn’t have otherwise had. Probably the most painful example would be the story of Earl Monroe, "Earl the Pearl," who dazzled people in Madison Square Garden. One night after a game he was trying to hail a cab in the rain on Eightth Avenue, literally 500 feet from center court. Some white men on the curb started calling him "boy," and he responded, a little angry. One thing led to another, and they pummeled him.

The more subtle examples were the more enlightening. For example, how do I become accepted as a member of the team? In my first year, Willis Reed was the captain. He called all the other players by their first name—Walt, Cazzie, Nate—except me; he called me Bradley. One day I said, "Hey, Willis, you call everybody else on the team by their first name. Why don’t you call me Bill?" He paused a minute, smiled, looked at me and said, "Okay, Bradley." It was a way of letting me know he was boss, but I was now accepted as a member of the team. It was like, "Okay, well, I will, but I won’t; I will when I want to."

TAE: We hear a lot today about greedy, immoral pro athletes, as opposed to the selfless lunch-bucket players of yesteryear. Is there any truth to this? And is there a racial aspect, given that the players who are demonized are often black?

SEN. BRADLEY: I don’t think race necessarily is the issue; the issue is money. When I joined the league, the average salary was $9,500. Now it’s $1.4 million. With the increased salaries came the use of professional athletes, particularly basketball players, as major marketing tools by corporations.

I refused to do commercials, partly because they were coming to me as a "white hope." There were plenty of better players, but I was getting these offers. Why? Because corporate America was unwilling to take a chance with a black person marketing a product to a general audience. I was a heavily media-covered athlete because of my unique circumstance. But it doesn’t even compare to what happens to most players today. Now you have not just the game, but the pre-game, the personality profiles, all of which have allowed Americans to see some of these black athletes as what they should see them as—individuals.

When I played, people were saying such things as, "The reason St. Louis moved to Atlanta was because people wouldn’t go out to see five black starters." Because that was what they saw: five black starters. But what the increased media attention has done is not only reveal the occasional self-indulgence or excessiveness, but also reveal that there is a great difference between David Robinson and Dennis Rodman, and that these are individuals with separate identities.

TAE: Sports is an area where blacks have done spectacularly well in America—without any affirmative action. Why do you think blacks in other occupations need affirmative action?

SEN. BRADLEY: Sports is very much related to economic status. A lot of African-American kids begin playing basketball at an early age, seize on it as a way out of a bad circumstance, and decide to take that risk: one in 10,000 who begin end in the pros. Too many of them decide that’s what they’re going to do. They lose other opportunities that would give them a fuller life.

It is not that there weren’t great basketball players who were black in the 1940s; it was that the country barred them from participation. Now there is no discrimination, and your own ability determines your success. What affirmative action does is look at other areas in American life, where African Americans are still barred, and say, "Let’s make it an equal playing field."

There is no adequate way to remedy discrimination in America today. What is your option if you feel you’re discriminated against? Well, you can take your case to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where it will languish forever, because 97,000 cases are backlogged. After five years with no remedy you can always go into the courts, if you can afford a lawyer, and file a civil-rights action, which takes another five years.

So you go through thousands of dollars in legal fees to determine whether you should have gotten that promotion to a new job 10 years before. Those who oppose affirmative action must be supportive of a stronger administrative process to remedy individual discrimination.

TAE: Race is a theme to which you’ve returned again and again. You say it’s time for frank talk. But any time a political figure voices provocative views, whether it’s Jesse Jackson or Pat Buchanan, he’s stigmatized by the mainstream press and politicians as an "extremist," a term that is intended to shut off debate. Isn’t the lack of invigorating debate in this country partly the fault of an establishment that attacks dissenters with a ferocity that discourages others from deviating from the middle path?

SEN. BRADLEY: The question really is, How do you have a discussion without shouting at each other from different corners of the room? Or without the center pointing the finger and saying, "They’re in the room, they’re not—don’t pay attention to them." Too often the debate becomes caricatures of positions. If you’re black, you don’t take a position because you don’t want to weather the storm of criticism from other African Americans. If you’re white, you don’t take a position because you can’t stand the heat when people point the finger at you. We have the illusion that shouting slogans is the goal of the civil-rights movement. Actually, the goal is a spiritually transformed America.

TAE: Conservatives complain about what they see as liberal media bias concerning you. You have largely the same voting record as Ted Kennedy, yet the mainstream press refers to you as "moderate Senator Bill Bradley." Why?

SEN. BRADLEY: They probably are aware of things I’ve done that cut against the grain, thereby illustrating the inadequacy of ratings. Like the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the most significant tax bill since World War II, which dramatically cut rates and eliminated loopholes. My Nicaraguan Contra aid vote in the mid-’80s. My voting for the budget cuts in 1981 and against the tax cut, which would have led to surpluses not deficits in the 1980s. My support for vouchers in urban America, where kids are not getting any kind of education. Or my leading the fight on nafta, as one of the Senate’s strongest proponents of an open trading system.

TAE: What do you make of the drubbing that the flat tax has taken recently?

SEN. BRADLEY: I think it is predictable and appropriate. We should have a two- to three-rate system, much lower rates, and many fewer loopholes. For most people, the effective tax rate in America—what they actually pay—is 15, 16 percent. So if you set a flat tax at 17 or 20 percent, it’s a tax increase. Now, you eliminate a lot of that with a high exemption level, where people making up to a certain level don’t pay income taxes. But the flat tax isn’t workable because it’s not sufficiently progressive. And to eliminate the charitable deduction, as the flat tax would, is in conflict with the need for a more robust civil society. The way to go is certainly not to have a 39 percent rate, but to have a 28 to 30 percent top rate, and many fewer loopholes. If you did that, you’d have a tax system where equal incomes pay about equal tax, and one where the market allocated resources more than members of the Senate Finance Committee. That would be better than having politicians decide who gets what tax subsidy, where rates are high in order to pay for politicians’ desires to give breaks away to different segments of the economy—often segments that support their re-elections.

Steve Forbes is a friend. He was helpful in 1986, when we passed tax reform, and I respect him. I certainly respect the principle of his fight. But I don’t think a single-rate system is going to happen.

TAE: For the lower middle class, the biggest tax burden is Social Security payroll taxes. Why haven’t Democrats done more on that issue?

SEN. BRADLEY: Because since about 1982 Social Security has been politically off-limits—you can’t touch it or you’ll die. Early on, before I did tax reform, I proposed a tax credit for Social Security taxes paid. This was another way of instituting a middle-class tax cut. Social Security is the most regressive of our taxes, and some thought should be given to whether the rates should be reduced.

TAE: Is that the sort of debate that can only be begun if we have a strong third party?

SEN. BRADLEY: Substantively, yes. Practically, no. It’s a facile phrase, "third party." You face enormous organizational, financial, and legal obstacles. Often in American history, an idea emerges, and when it is given sufficient attention, one of the two major parties absorbs it. That’s why you don’t have third parties.

TAE: We saw the rudiments of one in ’92, didn’t we, with the Middle American coalition that Perot put together?

SEN. BRADLEY: No, I don’t think you did. You saw a group of people who were frustrated with the process and willing to take a risk. But in presidential politics, there’s only one number that’s important: 270—the electoral votes needed to win. And Ross Perot, in 1992, got fewer electoral votes than Strom Thurmond did in 1948, when he ran for President as a Dixiecrat.

If you mean is there a large segment of America to which politicians are not speaking adequately today, I’d say yes. People cannot locate themselves in the economic story today. People are losing their jobs for reasons that are inexplicable to them, that are not simply economic, but go to values of loyalty, commitment, trust. And they therefore lash out at politicians, who are supposed to help create a stable structure where they can work hard, earn a living, and take care of their kids. That happened in 1992. Bush was thrown out; Clinton came in. It happened in 1994. Clinton was rejected; Gingrich came in. It will happen again in ’96, when the Republicans will be rejected and the
Democrats will come back.

One of the reasons I’m leaving the Senate is to think through where this is headed.Millions of Americans can’t locate themselves in this economic transition. At the same time, millions of Americans are yearning for something deeper than the material in their lives. I think there’s a potential convergence there.

TAE: Will you remain in D.C. or return to New Jersey?

SEN. BRADLEY: Well, my wife’s a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey; so we’ll be in Montclair, where we live now. I’ll probably keep some base in Washington, too.

TAE: Will you accept positions on corporate boards of directors?

SEN. BRADLEY: I want to stay in the world of ideas. I want to learn more about the information revolution, and about Asia. The areas of action for me are racial healing and political reform—in particular campaign-finance reform. Your question, which is my wife’s, is, "Well, what’s your job?" That has not been determined.

TAE: You were a champion fund-raiser in the late ’80s. What do you think of the reform proposal that would require congressional candidates to raise almost all of their money in their own districts?

SEN. BRADLEY: Money in politics is like ants in your kitchen: You have to keep them all out, or you’ll have them all in. So financing reform alone is not the answer. I would do four things. One: the public airwaves belong to the public. And so six weeks before the election, candidates for the Senate ought to have access to the airwaves for a certain period of time, free of cost.

Then I would pass a constitutional amendment—that’s the only way you can do it, given the Supreme Court’s wrong-headed decision that a rich man’s wallet is the equivalent of a poor man’s soapbox—saying that Congress and the states may limit what an individual spends on his or her own campaign.

I would limit the amount of money that can be contributed in primaries. A few hundred dollars, and only to candidates in your own state. And I would allow people to contribute up to $5,000 per year to a Senate election fund that on Labor Day, or the day after the primary, whichever is later, would be divided equally among Republican, Democrat, and/or qualified independent. And that’s all the money there would be in politics.

TAE: One problem with free time for candidates is that almost everything that candidates for high office would say in such spots would be written by some professional packager. What do you think of the ubiquitous practice of ghostwriters formulating the speeches and books that candidates take credit for?

SEN. BRADLEY: The media appetite for information is one thing that drives this. It took me three years to write my book. When I’m not back in New Jersey, I’m in my study. My wife began to call it "that room." You can’t produce something quickly. A speech takes me a week to do—I write my stuff, by and large—and that argues for a more civil, slower process, where you could actually think. At the moment, the media hunger requires you to be out there, because they want a face saying what they want you to say.

TAE: In your 18 years in this chamber, what senator have you admired most?

SEN. BRADLEY: My two mentors were Russell Long and Scoop Jackson.

TAE: Are there any Republican senators who would make
outstanding presidents?

SEN. BRADLEY: There are a lot of Republican senators who’ve been outstanding senators: Jack Danforth, Dick Lugar, Nancy Kassebaum, Bill Cohen, Pete Domenici, Bob Dole. You’ve got some younger people, they’ve got to learn that the Senate doesn’t reward extremists, and sooner or later they’ll have to sit in a room with Democrats and craft something that’s going to get enough votes to make it a law. You have people whom the Senate will break, and when the Senate breaks them they’ll become good senators, able to produce 80-20 wins as opposed to 51-49 wins that are reversed in conference or never get out of the Senate.

TAE: What cultural figure has best described New Jersey?

SEN. BRADLEY: Bruce [Springsteen] is the troubadour of
New Jersey.

TAE: When he moved to Los Angeles, wasn’t it a betrayal?

SEN. BRADLEY: Well, he kept his home in Rumson. It doesn’t change his earlier work about New Jersey.

TAE: Who’s the second-best basketball player in the Senate?

SEN. BRADLEY: There’s no close second.