Excerpts from an old article on Zell Miller
From Salon, August 2004:
Republicans say their party occupies the mainstream, common-sense political center. The real problem, they argue, is that the Democratic Party has been driven left by monomaniacal special interest groups and the wild-eyed likes of Michael Moore, George Soros, and Whoopi Goldberg. Their favorite piece of evidence? Zell Miller....
According to the Republican story, a decade ago the Democratic Party was centrist enough for a Southern conservative like Miller. But in the Dean-Gore-Pelosi-Sharpton-Kerry era, there's just no place for a decent man of values....
This argument amounts to a basic truth wrapped in a major fraud. Democrats have tacked left in recent years (though more in tone than in substance). But Zell Miller has moved, too. Far from representing some lonely, abandoned Democratic center, Miller has become a cartoonish GOP partisan....
Democrats have never really come up with a good explanation for Miller's betrayal. One theory is that Miller is simply blowing with Southern political winds. Democrats once reigned in Deep South states like Georgia, but no longer. In 1990 only three of the region's 10 Senate seats were held by Republicans. Today that proportion is reversed: three Democrats and seven Republicans—and that's only if you count Miller as a Democrat....Miller would hardly be the first Southern Democrat in Congress to react to this trend. Several have switched parties in the past decade, including Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby. What's curious is that, while other Democrats have changed parties as a matter of electoral survival, Miller has no such motivation: He's retiring when his term ends in January. And at 72 years old he probably has no future in electoral politics.
It's also possible that Miller simply feels slighted. Miller is an immensely proud man and acutely sensitive to signs of condescension toward his rural heritage. He grew up in a tiny north Georgia mountain town....Upon leaving the governorship in 1998 Miller said that one of his greatest regrets was that he never challenged "someone at the Atlanta newspapers to duel over their never-ending bigotry toward rural mountain people." More than once, he has taken to the Senate floor to launch a tirade against someone for stereotyping "hillbillies"—including one stemwinder aimed at CBS last year for its proposed laugh-at-white-trash reality show, The Real Beverly Hillbillies.
A National Party No More makes it clear Miller sees today's Democrats as snooty elitists—and he resents them....
Lyndon Johnson also had his own problems with condescension from Northerners. Ali G didn't sum up the issues like this:
Booyakasha - Professor G indahouse aiii. Big shout out de Harvard massiv I iz done a capital 'H', coz Harvard iz a place innit - u see I ain't no ignoranus. Things like 'apple' and 'orange' do not start with a capital letter, unless dey iz at de start of a sentence - but some of you brainboxes probably know dat already innit.Me name be Ali G and me represent de UK. For those of u who didn't study geography de UK is a place over a 100 MILES away from here, de capital of it is? Anyone? Not u geography square! ....yes, it is Liverpool. U iz clever and quite fly if u don't mind me sayin....
It iz a well big honour to be arksed ere today. To fink dat so many great people has been educated ere like Lyndon Banes Johnson, or as he is better known - JFK, George Clinton was also ere I fink , and de one before him, and also...William Tell - is he one of your lot, probably, and dat bloke wiv de hat, but most importantly dat really fit honey from Star Wars - if u iz out dere, me'd love to - me iz stayin at de Best Western Hotel - me's got a really nice room, altho since dis morning dem has put a parental lock on de tv.
Oops. This might be more appropriate:
If Kennedy was the 'intellectual's best friend', Lyndon B. Johnson was their nemesis; he despised what he called the 'Harvards', even if it did not stop him from hiring them. For their part, the east coast Jewish intellectuals were wary of the boorish Texan. It was during Johnson's time in office, and in large part because of it, that the intellectual community in America irrevocably fractured and splintered into factionalism, often engaging in 'open warfare' with the White House. Thus, intellectuals looked back to Kennedy's presidency as a halcyon age.
Continuing on with the reading, here are some takes on subsequent presidents:
Unlike Johnson, Nixon respected and admired intellectuals while he reviled their politics. Nonetheless, he astutely hired the Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan who, in turn, envisaged an intellectual cadre to assist the president. Those he recommended, like Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Norman Podhoretz, would later coalesce and emerge as the vanguard of the nascent neo-conservative movement. These neo-con intellectuals went on to have extensive contact with Gerald Ford during his period in office, but were ignored by Jimmy Carter. As a Beltway outsider and having been elected without their help, Carter felt that Zbigniew Brzezinski was all he needed. Consequently, the neo-con intellectuals abandoned him for Reagan, who repaid them in full by using them though he did not need to. By that point, conservative intellectuals were practically queuing up to lend him a hand. Like Carter before him, George H. W. Bush was wary of intellectuals and suffered accordingly. In contrast, Clinton maintained good relations with intellectuals, which paid great dividends. Similarly, George W. Bush set about stung his administration with conservative intellectuals who had been languishing in the think tanks, journals and universities that would still take them while Clinton was in office.
From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here)
[12/28/2006 - my del.icio.us tags for Gerald R. Ford Jr. are here.]
Comments
It's like deja vu all over again.