Give 'em Zell, Boys!

By T. Henry Camp | Friday, January 23, 2004

Gun Control: Opposes
Abortion: Opposes
War in Iraq: Supports
Lowering taxes: Supports
Balancing the budget: Supports
President Bush: Supports

This short list of political positions could only apply to a Republican, right?

Nope.

Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) touts all these views in his new book, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat. Yet Miller proudly claims his birthright in the Democratic Party even as he vividly describes his numerous disagreements with the party's platform.

Miller notes he has not abandoned the Democrats; they have abandoned him. The "Big D" FDR Democrats of old once gripped the Southern Democrat tightly, but, recently, their grasp on him has loosened. Despite his disgust at the party's recent direction, this former Marine stubbornly hangs on to the "D" at the end of his name even as his own party increases its efforts to brush him aside.

When asked why he won't just switch to the Republican side of the aisle— like so many other Southerners—Miller says his party is like an old rundown house that he has lived in all his life. Even the strangers that have moved into the basement can't make him give it up. So loyalty and habit combine to produce Miller's final plea to his party to moderate its message and recapture the Southern constituency that allowed it to sustain a national governing majority for much of the twentieth century.

Like the man himself, the book has produced some strange reactions. Oddly, most of its critics are Democrats, who apparently see Miller as a slightly senile uncle living in their house. They have questioned his motives and publicly denounced him.

The Democratic Party of Georgia removed Miller—its highest ranking member—from the main page of its website. Former President Jimmy Carter expressed his shame at the senior Senator's tact. James Carville, whom Miller recommended to then-Governor Bill Clinton as a campaign advisor in the '92 Presidential run, even asked his old friend and boss to return a donation made during his Senate race.

The icing on the cake came when DNC member Debra DeShong remarked, "Zell Miller hasn't helped a Democrat in years, and as my mother always said, don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Republicans have praised the work and the author, whose chief aim (albeit self-admittedly unrealistic) is reinvigorating the Democratic Party. Conversely, hailing Miller as the wisest elder of the current Democratic household, Jack Kemp's endorsement reads, "Miller's candid and sincere assessment of his party and the issues should be taken seriously if Democrats hope for their party to become a governing party once again."

Popular with readers, the book has been a great success, landing on the New York Times Bestseller List for the past two months. Miller is met at Georgia book-signings by standing-room-only voters who line the squares of courthouses throughout the Peach State.

Miller's allusion in his subtitle to Barry Goldwater's famous assessment of his party's values may partially account for Republican interest in the work. Conservative columnist Robert Novak describes Republicans' delight at the work when he writes, "The Democratic Party would be well advised to take his sincere advice, but the certainty that they won't only underlies Senator Miller's concerns about his ancestral party."

Whereas Goldwater's book inspired a generation of Republicans and spawned an entire political movement, Miller's work may become more of a eulogy to the conservative Southern Democrat given during the final phases of a great realignment in American politics. Republicans believe Miller is right in his assessment: We are witnessing the beginning of a decades-long majority for Republicans in the American South. In this election cycle, five Southern Democrats will vacate seats in the U.S. Senate from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana.

Zell Bryan Miller was born in 1932 in the tiny Appalachian town of Young Harris, GA. After two aborted attempts at college, Miller served as a sergeant in the Marines from 1953-1956. After this life-changing stint in the military, he finished his education at the University of Georgia, graduating in 1958 with an MA in history. Teaching history for his beloved Young Harris College, he ran and won a seat in the Georgia State Senate, where he served for fourteen years until he successfully competed in his first statewide race for lieutenant governor, a position he would hold for sixteen years. In 1990, he won the first of two terms as Georgia's governor. He retired upon leaving office until he was asked to fill the vacancy left in the U.S. Senate by the death of Senator Paul Coverdell (R-GA). Insisting that the people legitimize his position, he stood for election in 2000, and the people sent him back to Washington to fill out the remainder of Coverdell's six-year term.

The book is worth a look just to glean the Southern colloquial aphorisms that Miller uses to bring the issues to life. Don't be deceived by his folksy tone. Combined with a tough, straightforward, Appalachian spirit, the book is more than just an entertaining read. It is also a well-researched, sincere account of some undeniably damning facts that the Democrats must face—or lose the South and much of middle-America.

Miller illustrates with a classic baseball analogy how Democrats have fared in the last nine presidential elections:

"Three times we got a hit [Carter, Clinton twice]. None of them were anything to brag about, but at least we got on base. Two times we grounded out and once the play at first was very close [Humphrey, Gore]. Four out of nine times we struck out [McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis]. We went down swinging and flailing at balls that were in the dirt or over our heads and it was not a pretty sight. It caused me to wonder what these players were doing in the major leagues."

He points out the obvious: Since Kennedy, only two Southern governors have been able to gain the White House for his party. Yet he claims his party has the attitude, "I see one-third of the nation [the South] and it can go to hell."

That not one person in the Democratic leadership can campaign on behalf of a Southern candidate illustrates Miller's point. What's worse is the South's growing importance. One scenario illustrates this: Were the 2000 presidential election to be held again today with the same states going for each candidate, George W. Bush would win by eighteen electoral votes instead of four because of the South's gains during reapportionment.

Special interests also receive their share of criticism for crippling Democrats' ability to deliver the proper results to voters through the political process. Miller shows the transformation of the elections process from one in which he first ran for statewide office spending only $175,000 to the present time where he regularly leaves fundraising sessions "feeling like a cheap prostitute who'[s] had a busy day." He minces no words in demanding that the current system of special interests must be abolished.

A National Party No More describes the ills facing the Democratic Party and also outlines the hurdles facing a pragmatic, former state lawmaker as he tries to transfer his earlier training to the halls of Congress.

Miller draws on his experience as a state legislator and governor to show how states must confront real issues everyday and deal with them in an efficient, pragmatic way. He would say the recent action (or inaction) in the U.S. Senate makes it look like university debating society when compared to the routine accomplishments of state general assemblies.

Miller has no patience for much of the endless political wrangling, because he has produced impacting results under much more restricted circumstances. As Georgia's governor he balanced the state budget while simultaneously providing two tax cuts—all amidst a national recession! Beyond this, he engineered ways to fund some of the most progressive programs in the nation.

The best example of Miller's ability to bring about real results and identify issues that appeal to all types of voters is in the area of education.

During his 1990 campaign for governor, he announced a proposal to institute a statewide lottery that would only fund education initiatives in the state. He ushered the proposal through the legislature and a citizen referendum.

The lottery has funded the nation's only state-run universal pre-kindergarten program for Georgia's children. Approximately 61,000 four-year-olds enroll in the program each year at a cost of $218 million.

But that's not all. Just as bold, the lottery funds the Hope Scholarship, which allows any Georgia high school graduate to attend a state college or university for free provided he maintains a "B" average. Since its inception, over 700,000 students have benefited from tuition-free higher learning at a cost of $2 billion.

Miller has contributed to young people's education and development in other ways. Following studies that suggest certain sounds can enhance the development of infants' brains, he secured private funding for an idea called "Beethoven for Babies," which provides parents an album of classical music when they take home their new babies from Georgia hospitals. Miller instituted a very successful boot camp to help reform delinquent teenagers.

This one issue demonstrates Senator Miller's difficulty adjusting to the "strange" ways of the upper chamber of Congress. He describes his philosophy in the following way:

"Myself, I'm a half-of-a-loaf kind of guy, and whether it's 75 percent or 65 percent or 50 percent—that's always better than 0 percent. You can eat half a loaf. Having no loaf at all may make a political point and save the issue for the campaign, but in the end somebody goes hungry—and I can tell you, it ain't the Groups or the consultants."

Throughout the colorful book, Miller's North Georgia Mountain wisdom steadily pours out like sorghum syrup. Instead of accepting his reflections and advice like the sweet Southern delicacy that they are, Democrats have instead reacted as if they had just been served a mouthful of sour grapes.

This is someone who has lived almost every aspect of the political spectrum from small town mayor to keynote speaker at the 1992 Democratic National Convention to being named "the most popular governor in America" by the Washington Post in 1998.

If I were a Democrat, I think I'd be listening.

Give 'em Zell, Boys!

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