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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Judy, speaking of Zell Miller, he is here with us. Zell Miller, who delivered the keynote speech. We want to talk to you later. We'll be speaking with Tad Divine, a senior Democratic strategist for the Democratic political ticket.
But Senator Miller, you have accused the Democratic presidential nominee of being a flip-flopper, but remember, as you pointed out yourself, 12-years-ago you were here endorsing Bill Clinton and going after the first President Bush. The Democrats are saying, you've become a flip-flopper.
SEN. ZELL MILLER (D), GEORGIA: They've said a lot of things worse than that. I don't think I've ever used the term flip-flopper of John Kerry. I've talked about this atrocious record that he's had for 20 years in the United States Senate. What a weak record it is on national defense and what a terrible record it is on raising taxes.
BLITZER: But as you well know, they're been many times over the years, you've worked very closely with him and praised him. The Democrats are circulating information that as recently as three years ago, you were praising him.
SEN. ZELL MILLER (D), GEORGIA: That was before 9/11. That was along about maybe 2001, and I'd come to the Senate, been there for about five or six months. This man was a war hero, and I honor war heroes, and I honor John Kerry's service.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Miller, the Democrats are pointing out that John Kerry voted for 16 of 19 defense budgets that came through Congress while he was in the Senate, and many of these votes that you cited, Dick Cheney also voted against, that they were specific weapons systems.
MILLER: What I was talking about was a period of 19 years in the Senate. I've been in the Senate for four years. There's quite a few years' difference there. I have gotten documentation on every single one of those votes that I talked about here today. I've got more documentation here than the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library put together on that.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: You also were, I would say, almost indignant that anyone would possibly call America military occupiers, not liberators, on at least four occasions. President Bush has referred to the presence of American forces in Iraq as an occupation, and the question is: Are you not selectively choosing words to describe the same situation the president of the United States is describing?
MILLER: I don't know if the president of the United States uses those words, but I know Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry have used them on several occasions.
GREENFIELD: Yes. So has President Bush.
MILLER: Well, I don't know about that.
GREENFIELD: Well, we'll...
BLITZER: You know that when the secretary -- when the vice president was the secretary of defense he proposed cutting back on the B-2 Bomber, the F-14 Tomcat as well. I covered him at the Pentagon during those years when he was raising serious concerns about those two weapons systems.
MILLER: Look, the record is, as I stated, he voted against, he opposed all of those weapons systems. That, to me, I think shows the kind of priority he has as far as national defense.
Look, John Kerry came back from Vietnam as a young man unsure of whether America was a force for good or evil in the world. He still has that uncertainty about him.
WOODRUFF: You praised him...
GREENFIELD: Then why did you say in 2001 that he strengthened the military? You said that three years ago.
MILLER: Because that was the biographical sketch that they gave me. This young senator -- not young senator, but new senator had come up there, and all I knew was that this man had won the Purple Heart three times and won the Silver Star and...
Look, I went back and researched the records, and I looked at these, and I -- when I was putting that speech together, I wanted to make sure, whenever I sat down with people like you who would take these talking points from the Democrats and who also have covered politics for years, that I would know exactly what I was talking about, and we don't have time to go through it on the air, but I can go through every one of those things that were mentioned about where he voted.
He voted against the B-1 Bomber...
BLITZER: A lot of...
MILLER: ... on October the 15th, '90, and on and on.
WOODRUFF: But do you simply reject the idea that Vice President Cheney, as Wolf said and as we know from the record, also voted against some of these systems?
MILLER: I don't think Cheney voted against these. BLITZER: No, but he opposed some of them when he was the defense secretary, and sometimes he was overruled by the Congress because he was concerned, he was worried that the defense of the United States could be better served by some other weapons systems, not specifically those. I'm specifically referring to the B-2 and the F-14 Tomcat.
MILLER: I'm talking about John Kerry's record. I'll let Dick Cheney, the vice president, answer those charges. He knows what happened in the Department of Defense years ago. I don't know that.
But I do know, because I've looked it up and it's there for everyone to see, that he voted against those positions as far as those weapons were concerned. He voted against all the weapons that really won the war against Communism, the Cold War and that are now winning the war on terror.
BLITZER: I know you have to move on because you have other things to do, but when you were speaking tonight -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- you seemed very angry.
MILLER: Me angry?
BLITZER: Yes, sir.
MILLER: No, no. I'm sorry if I gave that appearance. I was very...
BLITZER: But you -- you seemed so angry that there are already some suggesting that the appearance could actually backfire from the cause that you're promoting tonight...
MILLER: I'm sure probably some anchors are saying that.
BLITZER: ... and the bottom line...
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: That's what anchors do.
BLITZER: The bottom line question is: Why are you still a Democrat?
MILLER: Because I was born a Democrat and because I was...
WOODRUFF: But other people change parties.
MILLER: Well, other people are not Zell Miller. I don't change parties. I'm going to die a Democrat. I'm going up to the pearly gates, and I'm going to see my maker, and I'm going to see my mama and daddy, and I'm going to say I remained a Democrat, a conservative Democrat.
See, you talk about your voting for all these Republican things. I voted for the conservative proposals. If the Democrats had put any conservative proposals up there, I would have voted with them.
There's nobody that welcomes a conservative Democrat in the party anymore. There's no room for us.
BLITZER: Senator Zell Miller, thanks for spending a few moments with us.
MILLER: I know somebody that wrote a book about that.
BLITZER: All right.
WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.
BLITZER: We're going to move on now. Let's get a different -- a very, very different -- perspective, albeit from another Democrat. That would be Tad Devine. He's a senior strategist for the John Kerry campaign.
Let's get your immediate reaction to what you heard tonight, Tad.
TAD DEVINE, SENIOR KERRY ADVISER: Well, Wolf, I think what we heard tonight was the difference between the politics of hope and the politics of fear.
I mean, I think of John Edwards' acceptance speech in Boston which was all about hope, the hope for the future of this country, for jobs, for health care, for the possibilities of America, and, tonight, with both Senator Miller and then with the vice president, the politics of fear, smear and attack.
And, unfortunately, because of this president's record, the record of job loss, the record of incredible cost of health care escalating under his leadership -- the vice president said the president made health care more accessible and affordable. That simply is not true, as everyone in this country who's struggling to pay for health care, I think, understands.
So we've seen a great difference between these parties. The Republican Party for three nights talking nothing at all about the agenda for America, for jobs, for health care, and I think these differences are like night and day.
BLITZER: But, Tad, do you dispute any of the facts that, for example, Senator Zell Miller had that he pointed out that Kerry voted against all these weapons systems over the course of his Senate career. Do you dispute any of those votes?
DEVINE: Wolf, I think your cross-examination of the senator really exposed the fact that he simply didn't know what he was talking about. I mean, Senator Miller says now after September 11, John Kerry changed his mind.
I mean, a few years ago, Senator Miller introduced John Kerry in Georgia as an authentic America hero. I mean, when did he stop being an authentic American hero?
I mean, listen, he's decided to come and do the dirty work for the Republicans. The vice president's been doing the dirty work for the president since the beginning of this campaign. So... And, listen, many of the systems that we're talking about -- weapons systems -- Dick Cheney tried to eliminate when he was secretary of defense.
I mean, there is no limit to the hypocrisy of what's going on on the other side. We're not going to be brought into it because the American people want this nation to go in a new direction, and really that's what our campaign's all about.
WOODRUFF: Tad Devine, let me ask you about what Vice President Cheney said about your candidate. He said John Kerry -- "his back- and-forth reflects a habit of indecision and sends a message of confusion." He went on to say he's been for and then against the No Child Left Behind Act, for and against the Patriot Act, for and against the North American Free Trade Agreement, and so on. What is the truth of that?
DEVINE: Well, the truth, Judy, is that the effort of the vice president tonight was not to inform the American people, but to mislead them.
For example, on No Child Left Behind, the president of the United States made a commitment to fully fund education reforms, and the president of the United States turned his back on that commitment. I mean, you know, unfortunately, this president does not believe in funding education.
This president has not come through with his commitments in respect to job creation. The vice president talked about tax cuts and what they yielded. In fact, what they have yielded is massive federal budget deficits.
So, you know, I think the vice president is simply not a credible spokesman on these issues at all.
GREENFIELD: Tad, let's broaden this out a bit. John Kerry came to public life like many Democrats as an opponent of the Vietnam War. Through the '80s and '90s, there was a substantial, if not majority, wing of the Democratic Party that was extremely skeptical about the use of force in American power, opposing things like Ronald Reagan's deployment of missiles in Western Europe and defense budgets in general.
Now as candidly as a Democratic operative can say, in the post- 9/11 conflicts, doesn't that record, whatever the details, pose a problem for John Kerry in attempting to say I would be the leader of a strong quasi-wartime America?
DEVINE: Jeff, I don't think it does because I think all Americans realized in the wake of 9/11 that we had to change our posture. John Kerry has said repeatedly -- and the vice president chose to ignore this tonight -- that he is prepared to use force to defend America, that he would use force without anyone else's approval, that he understands that his first priority and commitment as president of the United States is to defend the nation. Unfortunately, the vice president chose to ignore that, and I think I know why he chose to ignore it, because he -- if he didn't attack John Kerry, he would have to talk about the record of failure of this administration. If he didn't attack John Kerry, he might have to be accountable for his own failures, such as his work as the CEO of Halliburton, a company now under federal investigation on three different issues for work done while Dick Cheney was a CEO of that company.
So they don't want to talk about their record, either Cheney's record at Halliburton or the Bush-Cheney record in office, because it's a miserable record.
BLITZER: Tad Devine, the most effective and the most popular line against John Kerry is a line that comes from his own words when he said -- and I'm paraphrasing -- now first I voted for the $87 billion, then I voted against it -- the money to protect, to support U.S. military forces in Iraq. How can you explain that kind of vote? He was only among 12 senators, I believe, that voted against that $87 billion appropriation.
DEVINE: I think it's very simple to explain, Wolf. $20 billion of that $87 billion was a blank check to be given to companies like Halliburton, the vice president's old company, a blank check for a company that has received $7 billion and no big contracts. John Kerry stood up and said we shouldn't give Halliburton, Dick Cheney and their friends, the powerful special interests who George Bush and Dick Cheney are beholden to, a blank check.
And, also, that we should pay for it. I mean, this administration doesn't believe in paying its debts. That's why they've turned the greatest surplus in the history of American politics and government into the greatest deficits. So he voted for responsibility, something these Republicans don't seem to understand.
WOODRUFF: Tad Devine, let me ask you about something that Dick Cheney said that some people might say was a devastating criticism. He said, "John Kerry declared at the Democratic Convention, 'We will forcefully defend America after we have been attacked'." He went on to say, "My fellow Americans, we've already been attacked." How do you answer that?
DEVINE: I answer that, Judy, by saying that that is an absolute complete lie, and the vice president of the United States knows it. John Kerry has said repeatedly that he is prepared to use military force to defend America and is prepared to do it preemptively, if that is needed.
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