by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, September 2, 2004 4:00 P.M. EDT

Zell Is Other People
NEW YORK--We finally made it over to Madison Square Garden last night and were in the hall for Sen. Zell Miller's keynote speech, which we realized, after getting home and reading some of the commentary on it, had been an important cultural moment. More on this in a moment.

We began the evening with cocktails at the home of William F. Buckley, at a party attended by a who's who of political journalists and commentators, among them Peter Beinart, Brent Bozell, Mona Charen, Rita Cosby, Midge Decter, Franklin Foer, David Frum, Jeff Jacoby, Mickey Kaus, Rich Lowry, Bill McGurn, Kate O'Beirne, Uma Pemmaraju, Norman Podhoretz and Ramesh Ponnuru. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, was also on hand.

After the festivities ended, we wandered over to the Garden, where we watched the speeches with Eagle Publishing's Jeff Carneal, Fox News Channel's Brian Gaffney, author Rich Miniter, columnist Deroy Murdock and blogress Karol Sheinin. Shutterbug Sheinin snapped some photos.

Michael Reagan spoke, then Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts--and then the big event. Georgia's Sen. Miller delivered a hard-hitting speech lambasting fellow Democrat John Kerry for weakness on defense. Some highlights:

In the summer of 1940, I was an 8-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley. Our country was not yet at war, but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.

President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger." In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee. And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue. Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter. Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most?

After running through a list of weapons systems Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam, voted against during his long Senate career, Miller said:

This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?

And then there was this:

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations. Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security. That's the most dangerous outsourcing of all.

The crowd thrilled to Miller's performance, which was as rousing as Bill Clinton's at the Democratic Convention in July. And the things Miller said had the added advantage of being true.

But the speech was badly received among the media elite. Especially scathing was blogger Andrew Sullivan:

You see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric. As an immigrant to this country and as someone who has been to many Southern states and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication, I long dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South. But Miller did his best to revive them. The man's speech was not merely crude; it added whole universes to the word crude.

Sullivan's blasting Miller as a "Dixiecrat" is simply bizarre. The term Dixiecrat refers specifically to supporters of Strom Thurmond's third-party presidential bid in 1948 (when, as Glenn Reynolds notes, Miller was not even old enough to vote), and more generally to the segregationist Democrats who succeeded in blocking most civil rights legislation until 1964. How in the world could Miller's speech last night have been "a classic Dixiecrat speech" when it not only did not defend segregation (a question that was settled long ago), but did not even remotely allude to race? The speech was entirely about national security.

This was not Miller's first political convention speech. In 1992, also at Madison Square Garden, then-Gov. Miller delivered the keynote speech at the Democratic convention that nominated Bill Clinton. Does anyone remember The New Republic, of which Andrew Sullivan was then editor, criticizing the Dems for having a "Dixiecrat" as their keynoter?

Josh Marshall cites Sullivan favorably and then pooh-poohs the speech:

Just on a pure political level it didn't seem to me like the sort of speech the planners would want in prime time. There's a lot of rage and anger in that man--and I can't imagine a viewer coming to that speech with an open and politically-uncommitted mind who wouldn't wonder where it was from. The tone struck me as a bit ranting and wild, barking and angry, with Miller channeling some mix of Heart of Darkness and Deliverance, which I can't quite decipher but did not want to be near.

Sullivan's and Marshall's comments reveal less about Miller than about the provincialism of our big-city media elites. All the evidence we've seen suggests that Miller's speech went over very well, and not just with Southerners. Writes National Review Online's Jim Geraghty:

The [MSNBC] focus group gathered by pollster Frank Luntz appeared to like Zell's speech better than Cheney's. They're describing it as, "stronger . . . focused on the family . . . dead on, convincing coming from a Democrat."

Then there's one woman: "His entire focus was on terrorism and why we should be afraid."

The "spitballs" line got a big laugh. The focus group seemed to like the line, and many thought it illustrated a serious point well.

The Cincinnati Enquirer notes that the focus group's participants were from Cincinnati, which, while in southern Ohio, is hardly the Deep South. Another bit of anecdotal support: When we got home and checked our e-mail, we'd received two messages from women of our acquaintance, both around 30 years old. Both live in big coastal cities and grew up in more conservative areas, but not in the South--one in rural Oregon, the other in California's Central Valley. Both gave Miller's speech rave reviews.

Then there was this hilarious postspeech exchange between Miller and Chris Matthews on MSNBC's "Hardball":

Matthews: Do you believe, Senator, truthfully, that John Kerry wants to defend the country with spitballs? Do you believe that?

Miller: That was a metaphor, wasn't it? Do you know what a metaphor is?

Matthews: Well, what do you mean by a metaphor?

Those city folks sure are sophisticated, aren't they?

'It Makes the Whole Thing Mutual'
Vice President Dick Cheney closed out the convention evening with a speech that was more subdued than Miller's but still made some good points:

A senator can be wrong for 20 years, without consequence to the nation. But a president, a president always casts the deciding vote. And in this time of challenge, America needs and America has a president we can count on to get it right.

On Iraq, Senator Kerry has disagreed with many of his fellow Democrats. But Senator Kerry's liveliest disagreement is with himself. His back-and-forth reflects a habit of indecision, and sends a message of confusion. And it is all part of a pattern. He has, in the last several years, been for the No Child Left Behind Act and against it. He has spoken in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement and against it. He is for the Patriot Act and against it.

Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual--America sees two John Kerrys.

Cheney opened with a joke:

I am . . . mindful that I have an opponent of my own. People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair. I say to them, "How do you think I got the job?"

It was a subtle, seemingly self-deprecating way of making a serious point: that unlike Edwards, Cheney was chosen for his experience and his ability to govern.

Georgia on Our Mind
After leaving the Garden, we stopped by the Supper Club for a party honoring Georgia's other senator, Saxby Chambliss, a RINA (Republican in name also). We chatted briefly with Ralph Reed, head of the Georgia GOP, and we got to meet Catherine Davis, the execrable Cynthia McKinney's Republican opponent for Georgia's Fourth Congressional District. "I'm going to retire her," Davis said of McKinney. Well, keep hope alive--but it's a heavily Democratic district.

An article in today's Washington Times reminds us why we're so glad Chambliss beat the self-pitying Max Cleland in 2002:

Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland . . . said the veterans attacking Mr. Kerry's war record have contributed to a spike in suicides, which, he says, has occurred among veterans.

Who is more likely to have contributed to depression among veterans, Kerry's critics or Kerry himself, who in 1971 famously characterized American servicemen in Vietnam as war criminals?

This Just In
"Republicans Back Bush's Second Term"--headline, Al-Jazeera Web site, Sept. 1

Firemen Against Firing Bush
Back in the Democratic primary season, most labor unions split their support between two losing candidates, with public-sector unions favoring Howard Dean and private-sector ones plumping for Dick Gephardt. The one notable exception was the firemen's union, which gave John Kerry an early endorsement. But the New York chapter of the Uniformed Firefighters Association yesterday threw its support behind the president, the Associated Press reports:

Firefighters chanted 'four more years" as Bush and first lady Laura Bush arrived Wednesday night at a community center for Italian Americans in Queens, about a half-hour's drive from midtown Manhattan, where the president will accept the Republican Party's nomination Thursday night. . . .

Bush embraced the firefighters and said the endorsement, nearly three years after he visited the World Trade Center rubble, was especially meaningful "because the truth of the matter is the inspiration I received from the firefighters on that site is something I'll never forget."

Kerry, however, has the backing of the union representing New York's fire lieutenants, captains and other officers. So much for the Dems as the party of the little guy.

Rebels Without a Clue
A CNN report on the anti-GOP protests contains this gem:

At least 5,000 protesters stood on sidewalks Wednesday morning in a 3-mile line, waving pinks slips to highlight their dissatisfaction with the economy. The demonstration, which stretched from Wall Street to Madison Square Garden, formed a symbolic unemployment line for about 15 minutes to draw attention to the 8.2 million Americans unemployed as of July.

A "symbolic unemployment line"--you've got to love it. As we noted Tuesday, if these people actually were to look for work, the unemployment rate would rise, presumably hurting President Bush's re-election prospects. Bush is lucky his opponents are so lazy.

Reader Jay Salwen describes an encounter on the streets of New York:

My favorite sign seen Monday was held by a nice little old lady. It said:

Who's next?
Korea?
Iran?
Syria?
Jordan?
Palestine?

I told her that it was a great sign. I could quibble with the order, but I could not agree more.

Homelessness Rediscovery Watch

"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000

"RNC Hard on the Homeless"--headline, Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.), Sept. 1

His Problems Are Legion
John Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam, got what the Washington Times calls a "lukewarm reception" for an unremarkable speech yesterday before the American Legion, which was meeting in Nashville, Tenn. In the second paragraph of the speech, Kerry committed this blunder:

You are the citizen soldiers who know that our service does not end on the battlefield--it begins there. You know that the pledge we took to defend America is also a pledge to protect the promise America offers. And let there be no doubt--when I am president, you will have a fellow veteran in the White House who understands that those who fought for our country abroad should never have to fight for what they were promised at home.

Kerry must've thought he was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The American Legion is open to all vets, whether they served overseas or not. Rush Limbaugh notes that in "The New Soldier" (1971) Kerry, then an antiwar agitator, wrote: "We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day, waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the greater glory of the United States. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars."

Not unless they think it might help them win an election, anyway.

Discovering the Roe Effect
You read it here first, in January 2003. Now the Washington Post and the center-left New America Foundation have noticed the Roe effect, though they don't actually call it that. From a Post op-ed by the foundation's Phillip Longman:

High fertility . . . correlates strongly with support for George W. Bush. Of the top 10 most fertile states, all but one voted for Bush in 2000. Among the 17 states that still produce enough children to replace their populations, all but two--Iowa and Minnesota--voted for Bush in the last election. Conversely, the least fertile states--a list that includes Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Connecticut--went overwhelmingly for Al Gore. Women living in Gore states on average have 12 percent fewer babies than women living in Bush states. . . .

In states where Bush won a popular majority in 2000, the average woman bears 2.11 children in her lifetime--which is enough to replace the population. In states where Gore won a majority of votes in 2000, the average woman bears 1.89 children, which is not enough to avoid population decline. Indeed, if the Gore states seceded from the Bush states and formed a new nation, it would have the same fertility rate, and the same rapidly aging population, as France--that bastion of "old Europe." . . .

When secular-minded Americans decide to have few if any children, they unwittingly give a strong evolutionary advantage to the other side of the culture divide. Sure, some children who grow up in fundamentalist families will become secularists, and vice versa. But most people, particularly if they have children, wind up with pretty much the same religious and political orientations as their parents. If "Metros" don't start having more children, America's future is "Retro."

This is almost a call to arms for liberal women to start bearing more children. With unions fading as a political force, the Democratic Party may have to hope for a different kind of labor support.

Reutervillian Discipline
Our item Tuesday about Reuters editor Todd Eastham's angry e-mail to the National Right to Life Committee prompted an e-mail from Reuters spokesman Steve Naru, who relayed a statement from David Schlesinger, the "news" service's global managing editor, which reads in part: "I personally was appalled by the incident and I can assure you it has been handled robustly through our internal disciplinary process."

We wrote back to ask what "handled robustly through our internal disciplinary process," means, and Naru replied that this information is confidential. He did reveal, however, that Eastham "is not employed in the same capacity. We are making appropriate adjustments to his duties."

The Onion Imitates Reuters
"Al-Jazeera Introduces 'Lighter Side of the News' Segment," reads a headline in the Onion:

With the stated intent of "turning current-events coverage on its head," the popular but oft-criticized Al-Jazeera Arab television news network launched its "Lighter Side Of The News" segment Monday.

"And now, we have something a little different for you," anchor Jihan Jalami said, turning from coverage of violence in Najaf.

"It seems a certain suicide bomber paid the price for his sloppy job Sunday, when he failed to annihilate a Jerusalem pizza parlor, and himself along with it. After numerous attempts to detonate the homemade device hidden under his shirt, the bomber gave up and ordered lunch! Can you imagine the relieved look on that restaurant owner's face?!"

The Onion satirizing Al-Jazeera by portraying it as behaving like Reuters. We'd say you can't make this stuff up, but of course that's exactly what the Onion does.

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