This election will change forever the course of history, and that's not any history. It's our family's history. The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us. And, like many generations before us, we've got some hard choosing to do. Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world. In this hour of danger our President has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him. Thank you. God Bless this great country and God Bless George W. Bush.

There has always been a strain of American populist discourse that would have us be led by a kind-hearted thug: someone with a clear moral sense, and not much intellectual capacity. This theme worked with Reagan, and it is working now with Bush Jr. If we were truly strong, we wouldn't cower inside our parochial values and retreat from the complicated world. But Miller's speech, all about strength, is really all about capitalizing on our weakness. Many conservatives I have met are very afraid - afraid of terrorism, and of creeping moral decay.

The answer to these fears is a reaffirmation of traditional values, and that is what Miller accomplishes so handily in his speech. What we need now is a real man, not a party politician, not a slick talker.

That Bush is a Yale-educated prince who never got his hands dirty, never risked his safety, and never had to fend for himself - none of that matters if the story sticks. And the fact is that, today, he is indeed a 'straight shooter' with a knack for down-home rhetoric. It would be truly courageous to say: Your family is at risk, and now we have to make some difficult choices and act as smart as we can to make it safer. But have you ever been afraid, or angry? And, when you were, have you ever made the smarter choice? Or have you just gone with your gut?

II. Wishful Thinking: Applying the Lessons of Miller to Kerry

As is well known, Senator Kerry has called in the attack dogs for the home stretch of the presidential campaign. Having been outmaneuvered by Rove's preemptive "angry liberals" strike, Kerry has ditched the No-Bush-Bashing guideline, and has gone a bit more on the offensive.

However, as we have seen in the case of the Miller speech, it takes more than mere attack to win the mind of 'undecided' or moderate voters: it takes a coherent, focused, repeated attack that is grounded in a simple narrative with shared values. Consider an attack that fails one or more of these tests. Al Gore attacked Governor Bush over and over again, on a host of issues, but because his attacks were diffuse and not grounded, he was perceived by many voters as too detail-oriented, as well as cold and aloof - a perception that could not be shaken merely by his wearing earth tones, or varying the timbre of his voice. Miller's almost subliminal attacks, on the other hand, were widely seen as based on down-home, common-sense, true-blue values - something more than mere politics.

In a few sample speech segments - really, glorified sound bites, some with the length of debate answers, others a bit longer or shorter - I have tried below to demonstrate what is meant by a coherent, focused, repeated attack based on a simple narrative with shared values. Obviously, if the preceding section tended toward heightened critical analysis, the next one tends toward fantasy. Everyone wants to put words in a candidate's mouth, and hardly anyone is aware of the multitude of valences, perspectives, and potential pitfalls which animate professional speechwriters' many meetings and redrafts. Even in the very limited speechwriting capacity in which I once worked - for a New York congressman, as a junior staff member - there were entire vocabularies that were off-limits. (The hilarious new book by Mark Katz, who wrote jokes and speeches for President Clinton, includes an enormous laundry list of phrases that could not be used in the wake of the Lewinsky affair - including 'head of state,' 'my staff,' and 'bring Iraq to its knees.') But the hypotheticals below are meant to illustrate what a Kerry speechwriter might learn from Zell Miller.

1. On Iraq Thirty years ago, in the context of the Vietnam War, I asked, "How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Now, in the shadow of the war in Iraq, we need to ask ourselves the same question: "How do you ask someone to be the last man, or woman, to die for a mistake?" Mr. President, you have never leveled with the American people about Iraq. From the beginning, we have endured a fog of half-truths from your administration. Your administration claimed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 - but there never was one, and you knew it. You claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but there weren't, and you should have known it. And you have claimed, and continue to claim, that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror. It is not, Mr. President. It was an unnecessary war, fought for reasons we now know to be false, that has nothing to do with those plotting to do us harm. Now, when you came to the Congress in March of 2002, and you asked for the authority to make war, I voted to give you that authority because I believe you should support your president when he asks for your trust in a time of war. I trusted you, Mr. President, that the intelligence you gave us was good, that these weapons of mass destruction existed, and that we were in clear and present danger. But you betrayed my trust, and the trust of all Americans who supported you. There never were any weapons, and now we are in a quagmire as deep as the one in Vietnam, with the situation worsening every day. Now, I know, you want to put a rosy picture on the situation in Iraq. You would have us all live in your fantasy of spin, and have us believe that things are getting better and soon we'll be able to leave Iraq. But you know this isn't true, because your own advisors are telling you it isn't true. You would also have us believe that this war was fought to democratize Iraq and the Middle East, and that it's part of the war on terror. But that's not what you told us in March of 2002. Then, you said that this war was about weapons of mass destruction, and a clear and present danger to the United States. That's what we in the Congress voted to authorize. Now that we know there are no weapons, well, now you've changed your tune - another classic Bush waffle. Certainly, Saddam Hussein was an evil man, and Iraq is better off without him. But is that what 1,000 of our men and women in uniform have died for? An adventure in experimental democracy, cooked up by policy wonks who never served in the armed forces and never put their lives on the line? Every day we hear a new reason why we went to Iraq. Mr. President, you owe it to the American people to level with them. Admit that you made a mistake. There never were weapons of mass destruction. We were never in clear and present danger. And now, having alienated all of our allies, we're in there alone. Mr. President, over one thousand brave men and women have died in Iraq. Spinning fantasies will not bring them home any sooner. This is not about the war on terror. This is not about Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. This was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and you owe the families of every one of those men and women a sincere and deep apology.

Notes: As with the speeches below, the above excerpt seeks to portray Bush as a waffler and dissembler on Iraq, and cast him as violating the public trust. Both of these points are intended to reflect Republican criticism of Kerry - that he waffles on Iraq and cannot be trusted as a result. The facts are with Kerry; Bush has changed his rationale many times, and people are dying as a result. With a number of phrases intended to make Bush seem like the flip-flopping politician (fantasy of spin, fog of half-truths), and incorporating Kerry's own "wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," the intention is to hit over and over again the same few points, cast in the light of trust and betrayal.

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Image: Stephen Pitt