As the convention opened, we were making good progress on party unity. Tom Harkin had endorsed me earlier. Now Bob Kerrey, Paul Tsongas, and Doug Wilder made supportive comments. So did Jesse Jackson. Only Jerry Brown held out. Harkin, who had become one of my favorite politicians, said Jerry was on an ego trip. There was also a minor flap when Ron Brown refused to let Governor Bob Casey speak to the convention, not because he wanted to speak against abortion but because he wouldn’t agree to endorse me. I was inclined to let Casey talk, because I liked him, respected the convictions of pro-life Democrats, and thought we could get a lot of them to vote for us on other issues and on my pledge to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” But Ron was adamant. We could disagree on the issues, he said, but no one should get the microphone who wasn’t committed to victory in November. I respected the discipline with which he had rebuilt our party, and I deferred to his judgment. The opening night of the convention featured seven of our women candidates for the U.S. Senate. Hillary and Tipper also made brief appearances. Then came the keynote speeches by Senator Bill Bradley, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, and Governor Zell Miller. Bradley and Jordan were more famous and gave good talks, but Miller brought the audience to tears with this story: My father, who was a teacher, died when I was two weeks old, leaving a young widow with two small children. But with my mother’s faith in God—and Mr. Roosevelt’s voice on the radio—we kept going. After my father’s death, my mother with her own hands cleared a small piece of rugged land. Every day she waded into a neighbor’s cold mountain creek, carrying out thousands of smooth stones to build a house. I grew up watching my mother complete that house from the rocks she’d lifted from the creek and cement she mixed in a wheelbarrow—cement that today still bears her handprints. Her son bears her handprints, too. She pressed her pride and her hopes and her dreams deep into my soul. So, you see, I know what Dan Quayle means when he says it’s best for children to have two parents. You bet it is. And it would be good if they could all have trust funds, too. We can’t all be born rich, handsome, and lucky. And that’s why we have a Democratic Party.
He then extolled the contributions of every Democratic President from FDR through Carter, and said we believed government could improve education, human rights, civil rights, economic and social opportunity, and the environment. He attacked Republicans for policies favoring the wealthy and specialinterest groups, and supported my plans on the economy, education, health care, crime, and welfare reform. It was a strong New Democrat message, exactly what I wanted the country to hear. When Zell Miller was elected to the Senate in 2000, Georgia had become more conservative and so had he. He became one of President Bush’s strongest supporters, voting for huge tax cuts that exploded the deficits and disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans, and budgets that threw poor children out of after-school programs, unemployed workers out of job training, and uniformed police off the streets. I don’t know what caused Zell to change his views on what was best for America, but I will always remember what he did for me, the Democrats, and America in 1992.
The second day featured a presentation of the platform, and strong speeches by President Carter, Tom Harkin, and Jesse Jackson. When Jesse decided to support me, he went all the way, with a barn burner that brought the house down. However, the most emotional part of the evening was devoted to health care. Senator Jay Rockefeller talked about the need for health insurance for all Americans. His point was illustrated by my New Hampshire friends Ron and Rhonda Machos, who were by then expecting their second child and were saddled with $100,000 in medical bills from little Ronnie’s open-heart surgery. They said they felt like second-class citizens, but they knew me and I was their “best hope for the future.”
