Salon/Blumenthal: Zell Miller's Sad Trajectory

From populist to Philip Morris lobbyist to shrill convention punch line.

The belligerence of the Republican Convention's keynote speaker was so overpowering that it easily obscured the monochromatic performance of Dick Cheney. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia did not vary his grim, hooded expression or his shouting like a backwoods preacher casting out the devil. But his raw rhetoric framed the most profound questions about patriotism and democracy in wartime.

The previous speakers, from Rudy Giuliani to Arnold Schwarzenegger, had been chosen for their lack of partisan regularity in order to better carry attack lines against John Kerry. Superficially, Miller was to be the crescendo of this tactical march to the podium, a Democrat regretting his party's fall from grace and singing the praises of the Republican president.

Miller had been a keynote speaker before, but at the Democratic Convention of 1992 that nominated Bill Clinton. His politics then were a vibrant Southern populism against the special interests. In the Republican sweep two years later, however, Miller experienced a near-death experience, almost losing as governor because he had suggested removing the Confederate battle flag from its corner of the state flag where it had been placed during the white resistance to civil rights laws. Afterward, Miller tacked sharply and steadily rightward. Upon leaving the governorship, he jettisoned his Democratic alliances and became a lobbyist for the Philip Morris tobacco combine. Elected as a U.S. senator, Miller played as though he had been betrayed, aligning himself with the Republicans. In this he was following the tragic trajectory of Southern populists past who had transformed themselves into their opposites.

Miller's speech was a recasting of the paradox of post-Civil War Southern patriotism that had clung to the myth that Southern soldiers were more valiant, and having been estranged from the Union, asserted superior identification with the nation through the glorification of arms.

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http://salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/09/02/miller/index.html