It was a November election, and I was standing outside in the wind in 20 degrees F., wearing a dress and pumps, pamphletting the voters who were interested as they entered the polls. The election: the deciding contest in my now too-often repeated tale, "The Radical Right Takes Over The School Board". A thoroughly-vetted slate of moderate replacement candidates was running against the incumbents. The incumbents had gotten the endorsement of the local Republican committee, by two votes. The election was being watched carefully by political analysts in the state, as well as several special interest groups that had a stake in its outcome.

A Republican I know, who held public office at the time and holds another, higher public office now, was also working the polls. He spoke to me thus, quietly: "You know I can't help you. But you know I know what to do when I get in the voting booth." And then I watched as he campaigned with great vigor for two Republican nominees for judgeships to be filled on the other side of Pennsylvania, while leaving the school board campaign solely in the capable hands of a Republican committeewoman wearing too much makeup and a large button depicting a fetus.

The point here: If you are an elected official of the party, be you a lowly committeeperson or an august Senator, you are expected to tow the party linein certain ways. It's OK to disagree with certain positions taken by your party, but never, not ever, to trash your party's official candidates after the primaries. If you can't bring yourself to work for the party, you are obliged by party rules at least not to work against it. A member of a party is not permitted by party rules to come out in public opposition to any endorsed candidate of the party. Ever.

If Zell Miller had been a Republican speaking in support of the Democratic candidate at the Democratic National Convention after the Republicans had already nominated their candidate, the leadership would have stuck his hat on his head while kicking his ass out the door wearing steel-toed boots. Such is the discipline inside the Republican leadership. It's true: you can ask any party official. They are proud of it. They have speaker after speaker slated to speak at their convention whose personal politics are manifestly not represented in very important ways by their own party's platform, and yet they all line up to kiss the candidate on both cheeks. And they should be proud: machine politics are a marvel. LBJ was a master at driving that steamroller before Vietnam took him down.

The Democrats have lost that discipline in pursuit of diversity. They are now captive to their many small, vocal constituencies. They need to get some of it back. And, IMHO, they could do worse than to start on the road back to party discipline by handing Zell Miller his hat and wishing him a fond farewell. Leave the ass-kicking to the Republicans: it's part of their charm.