Bradley, with his wife Ernestine, formally announced his campaign for president, Wednesday. (Reuters)

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 1999; 1:15 p.m. EDT

"I feel an urgent need to seize this moment in history, to strengthen the weak and to challenge the strong to lead us into our full greatness as a nation," Bradley told the crowd.

In a speech long on rhetoric and short on details, Bradley declared "We can reduce childhood poverty. We can increase the number of Americans with quality health care. We can mute the voice of big money in our elections, and we can put in place long-overdue gun control. If we do these things, we will be safer, healthier and more in control of our future."

With a crowd of 1,500 people gathered in this small Mississippi River town, 30 miles south of St. Louis, Bradley said that he would offer the American voters a different kind of politics: "There are two kinds of politicians: those who talk and promise, and those who listen and do. I know which one I am."

Bradley has been running for the Democratic nomination for nearly a year, but he used this post-Labor Day event to "kick off" his bid in a setting designed to stress his small town roots and modest beginnings. He faces, however, a daunting task. In a new Washington Post/ABC poll he ran far behind his Democratic competitor Vice President Gore – 29 percent to 64 percent. Though in some key states such as New Hampshire, Bradley is neck and neck with Gore.

Though his father was president of the local bank and his family was clearly more comfortable than most of the working class families employed by the Pittsburgh Plate and Glass plant here, Bradley focused on his own work ethic and his family's unpretentious qualities.

"My father never went to college," he said. And his mother was a fourth-grade teacher. As a boy "I had a paper route, and every afternoon I delivered copies of the Daily News Democrat to the doorsteps of my neighbors . . . My grandfather and I sometimes took a .22 and went down to the river and shot at logs floating by."

As president, Bradley suggested that he would be a leader in the mold of Robert F. Kennedy. "Isn't it just common sense that we make sure every child in America is covered by health care? Isn't it just common sense that we protect our natural world from destruction and do what it takes to achieve racial unity? . . . What others may call idealism is a common sense reality I know we can achieve."