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November 1, 1999 7:00PM
BILL BRADLEY, YOUNG REPUBLICAN?
Bill Bradley appears to have joined his party 35 years ago because of a
simple mathematical mistake. "I remember the exact moment that I became a
Democrat," he said earlier this month in Iowa. "It was the summer of 1964.
I was an intern in Washington between my junior and senior year in
college. And I was in the Senate chamber the night the 1964 Civil Rights
Act passed that desegregated public accommodations in America. ... And I
became a Democrat because it was the party of justice. It was Democrats
that stepped forward that evening in the Senate and cast their vote that
washed away the stain of segregation in this country."
Ooops. Turns out that 82 percent of Senate Republicans supported the Civil
Rights Act (27 of 33), compared to 69 percent of Democrats (46 of 67). In
fact, there were three-and-a-half times the number of Democrats (21)
opposing the bill as Republicans (6). One of the Democrats voting against
the 1964 Civil Rights Act, incidentally, was named Albert Gore, Sr.
Could Bradley be thinking of the House vote instead of the Senate vote?
Nope. In the House, 80 percent of Republican members voted for the act
(138 of 172), versus 61 percent of Democrats (152 of 248).
FAILED EXPERIMENT
Bill Bradley, on Wednesday night during in his town-hall meeting with Vice
President Gore: "If I'm President of the United States, when it comes to
urban public education, we're going to try this, we're going to try that.
We're going to experiment here, experiment there."
Bradley, on September 10: "I decided to support vouchers on an
experimental basis in several urban areas, in part to test the hypothesis
of school-choice people, which is that it will improve public schools. Now
we have [standardized] tests going and I don't think those experiments are
necessary."
Updated By:
Ramesh Ponnuru - Senior Editor
John J. Miller - National Political Reporter
Kate Dwyer - Editorial Associate
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