[IP] The letter Jimmy Carter sent Zell Miller
Begin forwarded message:
From: John Adams <jadams01@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: September 7, 2004 6:21:55 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: For IP? The letter Jimmy Carter sent Zell Miller
Jimmy Carter kinda tears Zell Miller a new one--found here:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_09_05.php#003438 By
the way, I went to Manuel's Tavern, the Democratic Party hangout here
in Atlanta for the "Swift Bar Vets for Truth" watch party to hear Zell
Miller's speech and get a feel for what people thought about his
performance--I should finish writing it up tonight, if you'd be
interested. (It's been one of those weeks--I got a page a few minutes
ago reporting an outage on our outage reporting system, which I guess
is about par for a hurricane season.) Anyway, enough about me--here's
the letter, bracketed by Josh Marshall's text. The last paragraph is
especially strong stuff:
The text of a letter former President Carter sent to Zell Miller over
the weekend ...
You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor
and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family
and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a
loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in
the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal
Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were
out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have
betrayed our trust.
Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter
George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed
strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John
Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party
in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of
philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom
Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.
Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican
Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible
that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the
Republicans some transient dividends.
Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and
very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the
character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush
campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South
Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max
Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should
have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre
claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security
of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you
described previously as “one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of
this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend.")
I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the
navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our
military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every
way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a
pacificist.
Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past,
respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend.
But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in
seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral
preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies
and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal
character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few
moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great
Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited.
I contacted President Carter's office for comment and his press
spokesperson Deanna Congileo told me that the letter was a private
communication and that President Carter would not be issuing further
comment.
-- Josh Marshall
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