Last Saturday, along with a large group of other GW students, I attended the Democratic National Committee’s fall meeting, where we were presented with the rare and exciting opportunity to see both contenders for the party’s presidential nomination – former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley and Vice President Al Gore – present themselves to an audience of key party members and an overflowing crowd of restless but enthusiastic college students.

The chance to observe and compare both candidates’ styles and messages in person was fascinating. But as a Bradley supporter, the event confirmed my belief that the Democratic Party must thoughtfully consider who would make the better nominee for the general election before rushing to bestow the honor upon the heir to the White House administration.

Both Bradley and Gore gave excellent speeches. While both men expressed similar views on some key issues, three aspects of Bradley’s speech reflect why he would make the better nominee: 1) how he approached this particular audience, 2) the stories he told to back up his beliefs, and 3) his grassroots view on the role of the individual in the election process.

The strongest difference between the two speeches was their purposes. Bradley clearly was campaigning for the party nomination; Gore was campaigning for the presidency. Bradley gently explained to his audience that he is acting on mutual respect, that while some Democrats may be reluctant to support him, he and they share the same goal: success for the Democratic Party. His message here: nominate the man who will have the better chance at winning the general election.

Bradley respectfully outlined why he wants to be the Democratic nominee, an appropriate message to the appropriate audience. Gore gave his standard stump speech about why he wants to be president. The anecdotes Bradley shared in his speech show how incredibly in touch he is with the American people. His tales about the hardships of everyday folks he meets at Best Western hotels and during his frequent beach walks along the Jersey shore are touching and real. These stories reveal his genuine compassion for the common man, a quality that Gore’s speech – which made more references to Hollywood movies than the real world – lacked.

Being in touch with common Americans more than with Washington insiders is a quality almost certain to guarantee mass appeal for the Democratic nominee in the general election.

Bradley’s stories nicely complimented his metaphor for an individual’s role in the political process: just as a river runs on the collective power of many individual drops of water, so too should the collective will of many individual people determine the outcome of a democratic election. This metaphor was Bradley’s direct appeal to the party elites: give the people a fair chance to decide the party’s nominee.

His campaign is strongly rooted from below and must not be suffocated from above, where self-interested party officials would rather preserve their loyalty to the vice president instead of supporting a candidate more fit to defeat the Republican nominee.

In addition to the candidates’ performances, observing the responses of the college crowd to the speeches was also quite revealing. Frankly, I was surprised by how enthusiastically Bradley was received by a crowd of D.C. college students. For two years I have watched the leaders of the GW College Democrats relentlessly kiss-up to Al Gore (as the huge, tacky, homemade “GW Students Love Al Gore!” banner at the DNC event illustrated).

However, this is the second time I have seen a strong response among GW CDs to Bill Bradley (the first being the crowd reaction to Sen. Paul Wellstone’s (D-Minn.) endorsement for Bradley in the speech he gave on campus a few weeks back). The position of Bradley supporters among GW CDs is comparable to Bradley’s situation with his party: support must be mobilized from below in order to overcome the biases at the top.

And I think it can be done, both on our campus and nationally. Bill Bradley’s supporters know that a Democratic nominee who is straightforward, compassionate, and in-tune with common Americans more than political insiders would be unstoppable in the presidential election. We have a gut feeling about who the nominee should be – who could win the presidency for the Democrats.

But as the DNC meeting proved, the run for the Democratic nomination promises to be a historic and exciting race.

-The writer is a junior majoring in political science.