Politician
Bill Bradley
Interview
Notes from Evan Smith
"You always remember your first. More than four years and who knows how many half-hour interviews ago, former United States Senator Bill Bradley was the guest on our inaugural show—he’s the tall one on the right. It was, to say the least, a very different time. George W. Bush had an approval rating of 54 percent. The war in Iraq had not yet been launched. Very few people outside of the Beltway had heard of Harriet Miers or Scooter Libby or Valerie Plame or Alberto Gonzales. The only hurricane talked about in New Orleans came in a glass. Today, the mood of our country—indeed, our country itself—has changed dramatically, and as much as we’d like to think we can hit the reset button, the simple reality is that we can’t go back and undo everything, or anything, that’s happened since Bradley last stopped by. What we can do is move forward, and, fortunately, he thinks he knows how. In his fifth book, The New American Story, the 63-year-old grapples with the social and economic problems that bedevil us and the root causes of the political gridlock we’ve come to accept as the status quo, and he lays out a blueprint for action that he believes would put us back on the right course—but only if we all play a part. The positive impact of teamwork has long been a talking point for this pro basketball Hall of Famer—a graduate of Princeton who went on to be a Rhodes Scholar before taking up the mantle of public service. Seven years after he retired from Congress and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, he’s still serving his country from outside the system. Whatever it takes—and anyway, how lucky we are to still have him in the game. " - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 05.3.07Watch the 4.10.03 interview.