Zell Miller, a great Georgian, statesman and U.S. Marine

Because I was born at Fort Benning, grew up in Columbus and graduated from the University of Georgia, I always had an affinity for Georgia during my 18 years of service as a senator from Texas. One of my dearest friends was U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell; when he died in 2000, it was the saddest moment of my Senate career.

Paul’s replacement was former Democratic Gov. Zell Miller, who died March 23. I admired him because of the HOPE Scholarship he had established. At our first meeting, Zell told me that he had no political ambitions or political IOUs, and that he intended to try to do what in his best judgment was in the interest of Georgia and America. A lot of politicians say those things, but Zell Miller did them.

When I introduced myself to Zell, I told him that having loved Paul Coverdell so much, I was concerned that I might resent him holding Paul’s seat and that might affect our ability to have a good working relationship, but I was determined to not let that happen. Zell told me that he loved Paul Coverdell too. Thus began a long friendship and political alliance.

I had started my political career as a Democrat mostly because my grandmother viewed Republicans as those guys in blue shirts who burned down her mother’s house. I co-authored the Reagan program in the House because I thought it was the right thing to do, and when the Democrats threw me off the Budget Committee, I resigned from Congress and ran again as a Republican.

Zell had been a proud Democrat his whole political career. But it didn’t take him long to figure out that most of his Democrat colleagues in the Senate held views very different from him on national defense, federal spending and the role of government in a free society. Zell was an old Marine who supported the President’s policies on Iraq; whether you agreed or disagreed, it was a gutsy action in a controversial war.

Zell was not only one of the 12 Democratic senators to vote for the 2001 Bush tax cut; he was the only Democrat to co-sponsor the legislation and work to make the tax cuts permanent.

The last legislative battle that Zell and I led occurred right before I retired from the Senate in 2002. Zell believed that the new Department of Homeland Security should be totally focused on protecting the American homeland and that the President should be able to hire the very best, reward achievement and fire people who didn’t get the job done. The Democrats strongly objected to any deviation from protecting union jobs and work rules designed to provide government employment security rather than homeland security. The debate was resolved only by the 2002 elections where, for the first time in American history, a new President had his party take control of the Senate in a midterm election. A testament to Zell’s success in helping to design the Department of Homeland Security is that no attack similar to 9/11 has occurred since.

In these battles, Zell got to know President George W. Bush. He shared the President’s affection for dogs, baseball and public education, but Zell was especially attracted by President Bush’s spirituality. Their friendship was to give rise to one of the important acts of Zell Miller’s political life.

Having been the keynote speaker at the Democratic convention in 1992, Zell decided to accept an invitation to speak at the Republican National convention in 2004. That speech was one of the great political speeches of our era. Zell lashed out against what he saw as an assault on the American soldier as well as that, in his opinion, Democrats were playing politics with national security. He concluded by endorsing George W. Bush for president.

The day of that speech the RealClearPolitics average of polls showed Bush leading the race by an insignificant 0.4 percent. Two days after Zell’s speech, the Bush lead had surged to 6.3 percent and for all practical purposes the election was over.

Zell Miller stands at the very end of a long line of Democrats who have supported a strong national defense, an aggressive foreign policy and an economy based on free enterprise and individual liberty.

America has been blessed with a few good men like Zell Miller in both our great political parties who have put our country and its people first.