But he’s neither. He carries a beat-up brown leather bomber jacket to go over his dark suit and orange-and-navy-striped tie.
The man’s got taste. And he’s not politician-smooth. He has a dry New England wit that appears when you least expect it, kind of like magic. Bradley, born in Rumford, Maine, and raised in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, has an earthy charm. The upscale Asian eatery isn’t an obvious choice for him, but it’s one of his two favorite haunts in town, the other being Neyla, a hip Lebanese hot spot in Georgetown. “Everything I’ve ever had here is really good,” he says. The waiter arrives to take our drinks order, and when his press secretary and I decline on liquor, Bradley rolls his eyes at us in mock disgust and orders a glass of white wine, as if to say, “Someone’s going to have some fun tonight.” But he drinks slowly, does not order a second glass and mostly sticks to sparkling water. Bradley, 53, is something of a health nut. He climbs mountains as a hobby; he has achieved his goal of climbing all 4,000-foot peaks in New Hampshire, and there are 48 of them. Now he’s going back and doing them all in the winter. He’s also a rock climber and a skier who took up snowboarding eight years ago as a “tribute” to his kids. “In my life, there is nothing that sort of gets the adrenalin going or makes you remember there are really big challenges you have to overcome sometimes,” he says. “I wonder about that when I’m 1,000 feet in the air, wondering how I’m going to get to the top.” Asked if he ever gets afraid climbing those heights, he replies, “Only a fool has no fear. It’s a question of trying to overcome the anxiety you have and the challenges you face.” Not surprisingly, his favorite place on Capitol Hill is at the top of the Dome. He takes constituents on tours there just for the fun of it. Before arriving in Congress, he served 12 years in the New Hampshire Legislature. He clearly loves being a politician and wants to stay as long as voters will keep him here. “I love my job,” he says. “I know it’s at their pleasure that I serve at this job. So far there has never been a day that I’ve gotten up and didn’t love my job. That’s a real blessing in life.” Bradley boasts that the Lakes Region, specifically the town of Wolfeboro where he lives and serves, is home to the oldest summer resort in America. The congressman lives on one of the smaller lakes, called Rust Pond. “It’s not named after, you know, a rusty nail,” he says, “but someone whose name is Rust.” The waiter returns to take our orders. Bradley lets us go first. “I am going to see what you guys get and get something different,” he explains. “Whenever I go out with my wife I get something different.” He orders the halibut. Asked how healthy his eating is, he replies, “I’m not perfect, but I do OK. I like my H�agen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s. My wife makes a mean chocolate mousse.” A typical breakfast for Bradley consists of granola or bread with jam. “I try to eat my carbohydrates in the morning,” he says. As for lunch, sometimes he skips it — “I might grab a granola bar. I might grab a salad bar downstairs. I have to admit to [liking] the salted sunflower seeds and olives as sort of a garnish. If I’m really rushed, I’ll have a yogurt. “I’m really pretty careful about what I eat,” he continues. “It is very easy to gain weight because you eat on the go or you tend to eat a lot late at night.” Unlike other lawmakers, who have gained weight after coming to Congress, Bradley, in his second term, says he has lost 25 pounds. A special chef’s offering of butternut-squash soup arrives at the table in tiny glasses. Bradley sniffs it and then it’s down the hatch like a shot of whiskey. “My wife is a big squash-soup eater, so we eat a lot of squash,” he says. “It’s a very healthy food. It keeps for a long time — you could keep it for a week, no problem.” Last winter, Bradley had to fend for himself when his wife went on a trip to Africa. Determined to lose weight, he “ate a lot of fish, chicken and steamed vegetables.” In the early ’90s, he and his wife owned a health-food store that sold vitamins, maple syrup, shampoos, toothpastes and other such items. “We sold some healthy treats too, some M&M treats. Obviously I liked them,” he says. But aside from food and healthy exercise, what is there to Bradley? Well, plenty. One thing he hardly ever discusses is that he used to be a magician. He says The Almanac of American Politics’ suggestion that he was a professional magician overstates the case. “I’d say [I’m] more of an amateur,” he says. “I did some charity events but little beyond that. “It’s not something I do so much anymore. I enjoy entertaining people. I enjoy surprising kids in particular. It’s like playing a musical instrument. You need to practice pretty frequently.” So what kind of magician was he? Was he a pull-the-rabbit-out-of-a-hat kind of guy or a cut-the-pretty-woman-in-half type? “I did some disappearing tricks, some rope tricks,” he says. It’s clear he has had enough talk of magic and would like it do a disappearing act of its own. Unfortunately, the subject resurfaces when he discusses how he met his Swiss wife, Barbara, and the first few years of their relationship. They met on a hiking trip to Nepal when he was 25. She was sitting with a friend in a hotel when he approached. “It’s sort of mundane,” he says. “I asked her to go for coffee, and the rest is history. We sort of hooked up and that was it.” Oddly enough, Bradley began the trip with his sister but after he met Barbara, the pair took off, eventually returning to her native Switzerland, where they lived for three years. “We both worked,” he says. And what did he do? “I did a little bit of magic,” he says, but he won’t expand on it and instead says, “It was hard being a foreigner there.” After the couple’s son was born, they moved to New Hampshire. The halibut has arrived. With a pair of chopsticks Bradley goes to work on the heap of halibut, topped with bok choy and shitake mushrooms, and surrounded by a small pond of tamari sauce. Bradley is a thorough and polite eater, and particular about finishing everything in the bowl. Throughout the meal, waiters stop by to try to clear his plate. He politely shoos them away. He’s not finished, and won’t be until everything is gone. The congressman has a strict work ethic. He reads two to three hours a day. He avoids congressional trips to exotic locales — he has gone on four trips, three to Iraq and one to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. An early promise to constituents was to hold town hall meetings in all 80 towns of his district; he has held 128 such meetings. “People are asking a lot of questions about Iraq and when do I think the American troops are going to come home,” he says. Having visited Iraq in January, he adds, “I came back feeling really good, but then they haven’t been able to form a government.” Back at home, Bradley is a big believer in government reform. He says it was “appropriate” for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) to step down. “Obviously there have been some problems. There needs to be some reform on private travel. Gift limits should be lowered.” The Hill normally pays for a lawmaker’s meal for this feature, but Bradley wouldn’t go along with that. He insisted on going Dutch. | 
