Bowing Out & Bowing Out Lite

Bill Bradley and John McCain bowed out of the presidential race Thursday - only Bradley bowed a little more.

"Now is the time for unity," Bradley said as he ended his campaign and announced his support for Vice President Al Gore.

For his part, McCain is thinking "change" rather than "unity."

"I am no longer an active candidate for my party's nomination for president," McCain said, leaving open the question of whether he's a passive candidate. "The people have spoken," McCain noted as he referred to his decisive defeats in elections two days ago. "I congratulate Governor Bush and his family. He may very well become our next president of the United States. ... he deserves the best wishes of every American citizen, and he certainly has mine."

But Bush apparently doesn't have McCain's endorsement. As McCain stood before a spectacular Arizona backdrop near his Sedona home, he never pledged his support to Bush, nor did he urge his supporters to head into the frontrunner's camp.

McCain insisted he was dedicated to his party, but also dedicated to reforming it, and "I will never walk away from a fight for what I know to be right and just for my country."

He urged his supporters to keep fighting too - "America needs you" and thanked voters who headed to the polls for the first time to vote for him, asking them "never to give up."

For now, McCain says he'll "take his crusade back to the Senate," even as he considers how best to bring about the changes he advocates - particularly in campaign finance reform. But what he didn't say was as telling as what he did.

McCain's decision sends him and Bush into an odd new symbiotic dance. Bush doesn't have to run against him, but he has to worry about him, for Bush needs McCain's voters. McCain, in turn, needs Bush to recognize the reform agenda - if he doesn't, McCain would have to break off and run as an independent candidate.

McCain's clear intention to keep fighting for his cause. And since he did not specify how he would do that Thursday, the politics of his personality and his agenda are very much alive.

Bradley is more the team player. Just a few months after he was topping polls and raising more money than the Vice President, he ceded the field to Gore, and endorsed him in a press conference in West Orange, New Jersey. He is not releasing his delegates, whom he said "deserve to have their voices heard." But, "I will work for him," and for the Democratic ticket.

Bradley was more relaxed in quitting than he was in the midst of campaigning. He began his departure speech with a bit of self-deprecating humor.

"I want to begin this with a discussion of my favorite books," he dead-panned, in a reference to his reluctance to answer questions about his personal tastes in books or movies, and to his bookishness. A bit later, to the giggles of his supporters, Bradley later groped towards a comparison of his campaign with Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

Adhering to his goal to end the campaign as he began it, "with a minimum of politics as usual," he distributed gifts to the press corps - a box of throat lozenges and a Tiffany key-chain with a running shoe charm.