US: The Republican convention heard selective criticism of John Kerry's position on US defence, writes Conor O'Clery.
Sometimes it's better to watch a speaker on television than in real life. Observing Zell Miller from high up in Madison Square Garden it was clear he was giving the Republicans the red meat they craved.
But it took the close-up shots on television to convey the full extent of the venom that contorted the Georgia senator's face as he directed a deeply personal attack on John Kerry.
Miller's keynote speech on Wednesday evening totally overshadowed that of Vice-President Dick Cheney, whom he was introducing.
The invective of the Democratic senator had the partisan crowd roaring "USA! USA!", especially when he linked it with contempt for "Old Europe" and the United Nations.
As he declared: "Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide," the stadium went wild, apart from a group of dejected EU diplomats near me in the bleachers.
Miller accused Kerry of saying he would never use military force "without UN approval", a reference to a comment Kerry made as a protester during the Vietnam war. That was then. In Boston four weeks ago Kerry declared: "I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security".
Recalling Kerry's Senate votes against weapons systems Miller said scornfully: "This is the man who wants to be commander in chief of our US armed forces? US forces armed with what? Spitballs?"
To justify his charge Miller cited Kerry's votes against production of F-14 and F-15 fighters and the B52 bomber. What he did not say was that Dick Cheney, as defence secretary, also proposed eliminating the same fighters, and the first President Bush wanted to phase out the B52s, on the advice of Cheney, as salon.com pointed out yesterday.
(Other speakers used selective data from Kerry's record. The Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Michael Steele, told delegates earlier that Kerry proposed a $6 billion cut in intelligence funding a year after the first attack on the World Trade Centre but did not mention that a larger cut had been proposed by the CIA director-designate, Republican Congressman Porter Goss.)
Miller got a thumbs-down from pundits on both the left and the right for his angry speech. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post said that "even if you turned the sound off, he looked really hostile" and Newsweek's Joe Klein remarked: "I don't think I've ever seen anything as angry and ugly."
The conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan described the address as "a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men and hateful rhetoric", and John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal said Miller "looked like a spouse at a divorce proceeding who says, 'Oh yeah, she's a child-molester, too'."
According to Bill Schneider on CNN it was an even angrier speech than the culture war outburst by Pat Buchanan which turned off many viewers of the 1992 Republican convention in Houston.
Democrats were stunned at Miller's outburst but hoped that by acting as "angry and grumpy old men", in the words of Kerry spokesman Joe Lockhart, Miller and Dick Cheney would again turn off undecided voters watching on television.
Miller has had a chequered career. In his earlier years he supported racial segregation, and once accused President Lyndon Johnson of selling his birthright "for a mess of dark porridge".
It was Zell Miller who made the keynote speech for Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic convention, after getting Clinton to hire James Carville as his strategist, a stroke that may have decided the election. Later he courageously called for the removal of the Confederate symbol from the Georgia flag.
But 9/11 changed him. He believes the Democrats now have "a manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief" in time of war.
Dick Cheney also laid into the Democratic candidate in a double assault which the San Francisco Chronicle said "left no trace of the kinder, gentler party" showcased in the first two nights.
Speaking as softly as a CEO in a boardroom, the Vice-President argued that the country could not trust John Kerry to act in defence of the US, and he also recalled that the Democratic candidate "began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed 'only at the directive of the United Nations'."
Kerry, said Cheney, talked "about leading a more 'sensitive war on terror' - as though al-Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side".
This was a reference to Kerry's statement that America should fight "a more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history".
He accused Kerry of making a career of indecision, prompting hundreds of delegates to wave their arms and call out "Flip-flop! Flip-flop! Flip-flop!" In a telling jibe he added: "He says he sees two Americas. He makes the whole thing mutual. America sees two John Kerrys."
After Cheney finished speaking at 11 p.m. his family came out to join him on stage; all, that is, except his daughter, Mary - his top campaign aide - who does not have the approval of the party platform for her lesbian life-style.