Unfamiliar ground

Former Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat, recalls the reasons that led him to take his stand with President Bush in the 2004 election in his new book, “A Deficit of Decency” (Stroud & Hall, Macon, Ga.). Author of the 2003 best-seller, “A National Party No More,” Mr. Miller is now retired to his family home in Young Harris, Ga.

By Zell Miller

In January 2004, an old friend, former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign, called and asked if I would meet with him and Ken Mehlman,the campaign manager. We were to meet at the Republican National Committee headquarters on First Street. I thought I knew the location, but since this Democrat had never been to the RNC headquarters before, I ended up going to the wrong building.

“Can you tell me how to get to the national Republican headquarters?” I asked the security guard. I must admit, never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined asking such a question. But I quickly recovered from my slightly perplexed state and was directed next door to the right place.

Racicot and Mehlman wanted to find out how much I was willing to do in the campaign. I quickly told them my highest priority was to see this president re-elected and I would do “whatever you think will help.” Marc quickly responded by asking if I would head up Democrats for Bush. “If you think it’ll help,” I replied.

“Would you be a speaker at our national convention?” Mehlman followed up. I quickly answered, “They” — meaning the Democrats and media — “will run my ‘92 speech [nominating Bill Clinton for president at the Democratic National Convention] over and over.” Racicot and Mehlman had already considered that possibility.

“But would you do it?” Mehlman asked again and I repeated, “I said I would do anything you think will help.” Obviously, they thought it would help, and we moved into planning the Democrats for Bush announcement.

On March 4, 2004, at the Park Hyatt hotel only a few blocks from the Capitol, I laid out to a group of Democrats and members of the media why this longtime partisan Democrat was supporting a Republican president’s re-election.

I told the gathering that I was honored to stand squarely with President George W. Bush as he led America “at this defining moment in our history.” I talked about how the road that had brought me there had been paved “with a lot of frustration, but also a lot of hope.”

I said, and would say hundreds of times in the course of the campaign, “I was born a Democrat, and I expect I’ll be a Democrat until the day I leave this earth.” But I told them I had grown mighty frustrated with the direction my party had taken over the last few years. I felt as if I and many others had been abandoned as the national Democratic leaders had moved the party farther and farther from the principles that had once made it great. I mentioned tax cuts, education reform, family values and a prescription-drug benefit under Medicare but stressed most emphatically the war on terror.

This old history professor talked about a frustration with Democratic leaders who had become so eager to defeat George Bush that they did not seem to realize he was acting on the same ideals we Democrats had supported for years: promoting prosperity and equal opportunity, giving help to Americans who need it most, defending America’s security and preserving her freedom. I said I was fed up with the politicians “who claim to represent my party but really represent nothing but special-interest groups and their own partisan agendas.”

‘Democrats like us’

I wanted people to know that all Democrats were not like the talking heads they saw “squawking on their TV, attacking the president,” that there were a lot of good, honorable Democrats all across America, “even some here in Washington, D.C.,” that felt as I did.

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