Bobby Kahn, the chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party, put it more succinctly: "Something went bad wrong."
Miller, a mountain man himself, insists he is trying to save the Democratic Party, which in just about a generation has gone from dominating Southern politics to flailing for survival. He offers a simple explanation, the one involving the plank and the thick-headed mule.
"I can't use a little hickory switch," Miller says, with an accent as rich and smooth as burled wood. "I haven't got long. I have to use strong words, or whatever it is, to get my point across. I'm going to be gone, I'm going to be history in just a few months."
A progressive governor
People of various persuasions agree on one thing: Miller was an extraordinarily accomplished governor. Some call him the best Georgia ever had.
The very model of a Southern progressive, Miller eliminated the state sales tax on food, easing a burden on the poor. He appointed blacks to groundbreaking positions and tried unsuccessfully to remove the Confederate stars-and-bars from the state flag. He reformed the welfare system, stiffened the penalties for drunk driving, advocated a two-strikes-you're-out policy for violent offenders and instituted boot camps for juvenile lawbreakers.
He was a risk-taker and not one to shrink from fights -- often personally nasty ones -- with members of his own party. (In one famous exchange with state House Leader Tom Murphy, a frustrated Miller referred to the Murphy "mausoleum and cemetery" as the place where legislation died; Murphy said he wished he had a mausoleum and, if he did, guaranteed "there would be another person interred in it.")
The signature accomplishment of Miller's eight years in office was creation of a state lottery, with proceeds funding preschool programs, technical training and free tuition for any Georgia college freshman who kept at least a B average in high school. Pushing a lottery in Georgia was a gutsy, controversial move, said Charles Bullock, a political scientist and longtime Miller watcher at the University of Georgia. "He was warned by folks, 'This is the buckle of the Bible Belt, you can't go out and endorse gambling,' but he went ahead, doggedly," Bullock said.
The lottery barely passed. But the HOPE scholarship program turned out to be a huge success, lifting Miller's approval ratings to 85%, with equal support from Democrats and Republicans alike. "He's a remarkably agile, gifted politician," said Q. Whitfield Ayres, a Republican pollster who has spent much of his career working in Georgia.
