Zell Miller’s Confessions

At first blush, you wouldn’t think St. Augustine’s “Confessions” has much to do with this week’s Republican National Convention. St. Augustine lived over a thousand years ago, after all, in the 5th century and he resided, for the most part, in Hippo, a provincial city in North Africa where he was bishop, and which is, it is safe to say, a long way from New York. And yet, as Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat from Georgia, approaches the podium at Madison Square Garden tonight to nominate President Bush for a second term, the various evangelical Christians and conservative Roman Catholics sitting in the audience – not to mention the religious at home – will lean back in their seats, remembering lessons from Sunday schools held long ago.They will remember St. Augustine, too, and his greatest work, and grasp the meaning of the speech that they are about to hear. In religious jargon, you see, the “Confessions” is a “conversion narrative.” Tonight Mr. Miller will deliver a conversion narrative of his own.Mr. Miller is 72 years old, and he has, by his own count, been a Democrat all 72 years. He first entered politics in his 20s, after he left the Marine Corps, and won a seat in Georgia’s state Senate. He was a successful politician. He spent 14 years as Georgia’s lieutenant governor, and then, in 1991, he began the first of his two terms as Georgia’s governor.For a Southerner, Mr. Miller has a lot of experience delivering high-profile convention speeches in New York City. In 1992, Mr. Miller nominated Bill Clinton at that year’s Democratic National Convention, from a perch in the Garden only yards away from where he will speak this evening. A few years later, Mr. Miller was elected, as a Democrat, to the Senate in 1998.He is not running for re-election.Maybe his conversion has something to do with it. Mr. Miller, like most southern Democrats, has always been conservative. But over the last few years, his conservatism deepened, and his partisanship became more biting. The problem is that this partisanship was – and is – directed toward members of his own party, which he says is “being cannibalized, eaten alive by the special-interest groups with their single-issue constituents who care about their own narrow agenda.” You can expect Mr. Miller to make a similar argument tonight.Like all conversion narratives, Mr. Miller’s is centered around a transformative moment, a time when the mental fog rises, and the scales fall from one’s eyes, and one is struck by an intense revelation. For St. Augustine, the moment came when he stole fruit from a pear tree. For Mr. Miller, the moment came on September 11, 2001.Mr. Miller has nothing but praise for the manner in which Mr. Bush responded to the terrorist attacks. Mr. Bush “grabbed the terrorists by the throat,” Mr. Miller said recently. “He won’t let go.” In contrast, he writes in his book, “A National Party No More,” members of his own party “are exacerbating the difficulties of a nation at war,” something “they should stop.” In other words, on September 11, 2001, and in the days that followed, Mr. Miller became a convert to the Bush Doctrine. He has not looked back. And he is not alone.On Monday night, another life-long Democrat, the actor Ron Silver, addressed the convention, ringing a similar note. Mr. Silver, whose most recent role was as a pornographer on the Fox television show “Skin,” admitted he was a “well-recognized liberal.” Yet, he went on, he thinks it “ironic” that “many human rights advocates and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression,” but also are “usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they catalog repeatedly.”“Under the unwavering leadership of President Bush,” Mr. Silver continued, “the cause of freedom and democracy is being advanced by the courageous men and women serving in our armed services.” Mr. Bush, in sum, “is doing exactly the right thing.” These are not exactly the words you’d expect to hear from a “Hollywood liberal.” However, these are exactly the words you’d expect to hear from another convert to the Bush Doctrine.The Democrats have their own converts, of course, a host of them in fact, which they showcased at their convention last month in Boston in a similar manner. Think back to last month, and you will recall that, during the pauses between speakers, the Democrats ran short video testimonials that featured registered Republicans proclaiming their allegiance to Senator Kerry.You’ll recall the Democrats paraded what seemed like a swarm of retired military officers who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 but plan to vote for Mr. Kerry in 2004.This tactic did not stop in Boston. Soon the liberal advocacy group Moveon.org will run advertisements in key swing states featuring disaffected Republican voters who support Mr. Kerry. More converts, but of a different stripe.For the Democratic converts, the transformative moment seems to have come not with September 11, but with Mr. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. This is what one convert, a woman named Deborah Nix, who is featured in the MoveOn.org commercials, told The New Yorker: “They” – she is talking about the Bush administration – “used our fear from 9/11,and they shifted our direction to Saddam Hussein, to Iraq, when all the time it was them.”“After that,” she continued, “I changed completely. I realized I was a Democrat.”Here, then, is an important, and perhaps unanswerable, question. How many converts does the Bush Doctrine have? And how many converts have found succor in the Democratic gospel? Put another way, do Mr. Miller and Mr. Silver speak for more people than Ms. Nix?The answer will go a long way to determine the outcome of the election. That there are so many different confessions, however, from so many different people, is not merely evidence of a new political tactic intended to win swing voters. It is evidence that this is a transformative moment in our nation’s politics.

Zell Miller’s Confessions

Zell Miller’s Confessions

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