Bradley’s air ball

The best thing about Bill Bradley’s campaign stop in Portland Tuesday has to be the blunt, perhaps inadvertent, honesty of his local campaign manager: The former senator, ex-basketball star and current presidential candidate came not to introduce himself to Maine, but to get the newspaper and television coverage read and watched by much of New Hampshire.

The worst thing has to be everything else. Yes, Mr. Bradley seems a nice Democrat of a fellow, soft-spoken, caring and concerned. He wants everybody to be happy, to have meaningful lives. He has a “profound respect” for the American people and is convinced they have “underlying goodness.”

In other words, he’s Mister Rogers with a decent jump shot. Only Mister Rogers isn’t running for president. Nor does Mister Rogers claim to have a plan to use part of the federal surplus to ensure all Americans have health insurance and then decline to provide any details.

Yes, early campaign appearances serve the function of introducing a candidate to voters. But where is it written that quick introductions cannot include some substance? What better way for voters to take the measure of a candidate than by seeing the schematic of a specific, concrete proposal? Especially one as vital as health care.

This is possibly the single most disturbing trend in high-level politics, this reluctance to discuss serious issues in a serious way. Candidates for selectman are expected to be able to explain why the town needs a new plow truck. Presidential candidates should be held to a standard at least as high.

One of the early knocks — expressed by supporters — against Mr. Bradley has been that as a senator he was too engaged with abstract concepts to bother with the details of legislation. The presidency has to be one of the most detail-driven jobs in the world. It does not bode well that this candidate has chosen to ignore that valid concern.

Mr. Bradley, of course, is far from the only perpetrator of this empty-word misdemeanor. The leading Republican contender, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, now in month six of introducing himself, is becoming almost legendary for his unwillingness to speak substantively. Given the extent to which voters in the past have been mislead into accepting political marzipan, it’s time to demand solid food.

Of course, there’s a reason candidates put off revealing real ideas as long as possible — real ideas can be criticized, picked at, even shredded in a way fluff cannot. Nobody wants to go first.

Eventually, somebody will go first. Until that time, what’s going on now isn’t campaigning; it’s making friends. Most Americans have enough friends. What they need is a new president.