Copyright 2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 24, 2002 Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: @issue; Pg. 2F

LENGTH: 691 words

HEADLINE: Zell's pickup line charms Big Oil

BYLINE: MARTHA EZZARD

SOURCE: AJC

BODY:
Every election year, we talk a lot about all those soccer moms. . . . Well, there's another group out there that votes in very high percentages. They are the pickup pops. --- U.S. Sen. Zell Miller
 


Zell Miller is after a whole new voting bloc: the pickup pops.

His bumper sticker slogan, delivered with farmboy charm, is bound to resonate throughout rural America: "Don't mess with pickups." Even against a formal U.S. Senate backdrop, you could hear the strummin' and stompin' as Miller rose to defend the "great American workhorse, the pickup truck."

Adding some lyrics from "The Talking Pickup Truck Blues," which he co-wrote last year with country singer Jack Clement, Miller sold his amendment to exempt all pickup trucks from higher fuel-economy standards. It sailed though the Senate faster than a whitewater raft on the Chattooga River.

I've always loved Miller's country-boy style. Until he took it to the Beltway and started using it to benefit the dark-suited oil lobby.

The only pickups those guys know about are the trendy double cabs with such small beds that the only thing they "haul" is two cups of latte from the nearest Starbucks.

But I know a real pickup pop back in Miller's North Georgia hills, and he's not crazy about paying steep fuel prices --- the real effect of Miller's amendment, which freezes the average Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard for pickups at 20.7 miles per gallon, lower than some newer trucks already get.

On our farm in the small mountain community of Tiger, my husband drives a 1985 Ford pickup. It's never seen a car wash nor had a dent repaired. The radio doesn't work and neither does the little red needle that shows you what gear you're in.

Fix it? "Heck no," says my pickup pop. "Don't you understand --- this is a farm truck. It's not a driving-around truck." What farmers should know is that many of their trucks were already exempted in the proposal to improve CAFE standards. What Miller did will exempt the latte crowd as well. The new standards would have saved a million barrels of oil per day by 2016, about what we import from Iraq and Kuwait, according to the Senate sponsors.

Miller's amendment now makes a bad energy bill, devoid of the mandate for improved fuel-economy standards, worse. While it doesn't specifically apply to SUVs, it will surely motivate automakers to produce SUVs that can masquerade as pickup trucks. (There's a sneaky provision in the energy bill that allows the administration to change the definition of a pickup.)

I agree with one of Miller's claims: "The back of a pickup is the think tank of rural America."

I've watched my husband, his father and grandfather solve more complex crop disease problems on a tailgate than you can shake a stick at. Farmers can figure out that new CAFE standards --- which would raise the purchase price of pickups --- would pay for themselves in a couple of years, and Miller knows it. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the proposed fuel efficiencies would save $4,000, for example, over the life of a Ford Explorer SUV. Savings for pickups would be similar.

Something wacky has happened to the man from Young Harris, who used to talk about how, as a boy, he calculated how far away car lights were from his mama's log cabin porch. He's learned an inside-the-Beltway calculation: It's image, not insight, that counts.
 
I'm still learning the complexities of being a United States senator . . . but on this one, you can trust this man from the mountains of Georgia: If this amendment fails, the tailgates of rural America are going to drop.
 


No segment of the economy can afford to turn its back on technological advance, farmers most of all. Miller's successful amendment to prevent farm pickups from attaining a 36 miles-per-gallon standard is actually what may cause the tailgates of rural America to drop, in numbers.

As for our 'aw shucks' mountain senator, he's already learned those Beltway complexities --- all too well.
 
mezzard@ajc.com
 
ON THE WEB: The full text of Miller's speech on pickup trucks appears on ajc.com/opinion

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2002