Democrats Named Miller

Georgia Senator Zell Miller has a rip-roaring piece in today's Opinion Journal, letting loose with all of his frustrations with the current crop of Democratic pretenders. He's hard on Kerry and Dean, considering the first to be a phony and the second to be completely unelectable. But he reserves his best shots for Sharpton and Gore, with a glancing blow at the Democratic leadership that's visited this circus on his party:

Of course, the rotund reverend has long been the "Godfather of Con." He's slick as a peeled onion. In just one short primary season, his timid fellow candidates and the even more timid media have erased the criminal Tawana Brawley shakedown. They've given this trickster who has never been elected dogcatcher a legitimacy he does not deserve: their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval as a bona fide presidential candidate. So, get ready to start counting Rev. Sharpton's delegates. They will be impossible to ignore on national TV when the Democrats take center stage in Boston. Memo to Democratic Chairman Terry McAwful: It's called "reaping what you sow."

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I'm not sure what Al Gore will contribute. Is he going to advise Mr. Dean to roll down his shirtsleeves and put on a coat, preferably in earth tones? Will he teach him to speak in that stilted highfalutin way? Maybe he'll teach him how to win a Southern state. Like Tennessee.

Miller's a man with his priorities straight: "Like George McGovern in '72, Howard Dean has tapped into that anger. I think regrettably so, not only for the country but also for the party." Look at the order of "country" and "party." It's taken for granted that this is bad for the country, but he needs to prove that it's bad for the party. And it's also taken for granted that country comes first, and party second.