‘Able Democrats, but left-wing all the way’

This is the second of three exclusive excerpts from Sen. Zell Miller’s new book, “A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat” (Stroud & Hall, Atlanta).The Georgia Democrat, governor from 1991 to 1999, won a special election after the death of Sen. Paul Coverdell, a Republican, in 2000.

Lord, those current presidential candidates in my party.

They are good, smart and able folks, but if I decided to follow any one of them down their road, I’d have to keep my left-turn signal blinking and burning brightly all the way.

All left turns may work on the racetrack, but it is pulling our Democratic Party in a dangerous direction.

Whenever the Democratic candidates encounter a political action committee, they preen and flex their six-pack abs for these special-interest groups, which I call “the Groups,” like bodybuilders in a Mr. Universe contest.

Or perhaps more appropriately I should compare them to streetwalkers in skimpy halters and hot pants, plying their age-old trade for the fat wallets on K Street.

Just look at them. They are convinced most Americans will like what they see:

John Edwards, shooting brightly through the skies like Halley’s Comet.

Joe Lieberman, steadily and surely plodding along, one labored step at a time, like Aesop’s tortoise.

John Kerry, the new century’s Abraham Lincoln, posing for Vogue in an electric-blue wet suit with a surfboard tucked up under his arm like a rail just split. It made me wonder, are there more surfboards or shotguns in America?

There’s also Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont. Clever and glib, but deep this Vermont pond is not. … He likes to say he belongs to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but I say he belongs to the whining wing of the Democratic Party.

My fellow Senate Democrats are decent, hardworking and smart. They have been friendly and more than fair to me since I arrived in July 2000, even with my rough edges and strong opinions. Let that be underlined: They have been much nicer to me than I have either deserved or expected.

But let this also be clear: I will not be bland in what I write, for I am not blind to what I see. What I saw gradually drew back the curtain on Washington’s political stage, and over time my awe turned to shock.

A partisan prism

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