Commentary by H.G. Listiak

Monday 11/03/2003

Welcome to my world, where it seems like every politician and pundit is writing a book lately. Staunch Democratic Senator Zell Miller, the former Governor of Georgia, has one out that will probably do much better with the right than the left of the partisan gap, now gorge. It's titled "A National Party No More, The Conscience of a Southern Democrat." From the Clintons to Terry McAuliffe to the field of current presidential hopefuls, few Democrats escape criticism in the book, where Raisin' Hell Zell says his party has abandoned him and the rest of the South. Miller analyzes how he feels the Democrats slipped from the majority to the minority, predicting they will stay there for a long time. He says the party leadership knows nothing about the South, writing that they still see it as a land of mint juleps and magnolias, with the pointy-headed KKK lurking in the background ready to burn a cross or lynch Blacks and Jews. Miller, a popular force among Democrats in the South, finds plenty to dislike about many Democrats trying to carry the party's presidential torch against George W. Bush. He targets one of the front runners, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, writing that 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 party. So, what do I think about the book? A couple of things. First, it's better than the fictional swill that Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton flung at the bookshelves, and second, since I'm a firm believer in a multi-party system, it might be a wake-up call for the left. Then again, it probably won't. And I wouldn't blame the South for their troubles. Many of them came from Arkansas. I think the biggest problem they have is that we are Americans at war, and Americans at war want positive from their potential leaders and not negative. These guys are simply doing themselves in, like Zell Miller says, as I see it ... I'm H.G. Listiak.