Max Cleland ended a seven year hiatus from public life this month when he attended the D-Day ceremony on the cliffs of Normandy. The former Georgia senator was named secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission by President Obama in May. In that capacity he served as the official escort of the president and First Lady at Normandy.
American news outlets largely ignored Cleland. If a forthcoming book is as juicy as The Hill suggested this week (their piece was headlined, “Cleland’s Revenge”) he’ll again have his moment in the media sun. Watch for it in October.
Jim Galloway spoke with Cleland:
An Army veteran and triple amputee, Cleland once had the state’s political world by the string. With his optimism and resilience, he became the figure through which many Georgians reconciled themselves to the costs of the Vietnam War.
A position in President Jimmy Carter’s cabinet was followed by 14 years a secretary of state in Georgia, and election to the U.S. Senate in 1996, replacing the legendary Sam Nunn. Cleland’s first day at the U.S. Capitol was a national media event.
But since his defeat by Republican Saxby Chambliss in 2002, Cleland has been relatively silent.
A bit about that election battle from me is here. Cleland’s book is titled, “Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove.”
According to The Hill, the Cleland book will criticize the Bush administration and “hints at a government cover-up in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.”
The book title itself implies a revisiting of the Cleland-Chambliss campaign of 2002. That includes the controversial Republican TV spot that incorporated images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, followed by one of Cleland.
(“Reprehensible,” John McCain said at the time. “Truthful in every way,” Chambliss said during his re-election campaign last year.)
But the newspaper also said the Cleland book will add a new twist, with an avowal that “Georgia’s new all-computerized voting machines were ‘ripe for fraud.’” If so, Cleland would become the first Georgia Democrat of rank to embrace that possibility.
There are many reasons for Democrats to mourn Cleland’s 2002 defeat. Aside from the personable figure that Cleland still cuts, he was the last Democratic link to the power and influence wielded by the likes of Nunn and Richard Russell.
But Gov. Roy Barnes, who was defeated the same night that Cleland lost his Senate seat, quickly dismissed the idea that a corruptible touch-screen voting system might have been at work.
Barnes is running for governor again. One wonders if he might change his tune about those voting machines in the coming campaign.
RELATED: In a Weekend Amusement Nate Silver Ed Kilgore, a Georgia native, uses the Barnes’ run to dispute the rule that says former governors never win “comeback” campaigns:
Georgia political history over the last half-century or so is chock full of comebacks. If Roy Barnes loses in 2010, it won’t be because history dooms his candidacy.
Correction: Attribution of the 538 post was wrong when posted. It’s been corrected. Thanks Ryan!