By Paul Farhi

Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page A05

Democrats accusing Democrats of flip-flopping. Ain't politics grand?

The alleged flopper in question is Sen. Zell Miller (Ga.), who last week endorsed President Bush's reelection effort. Not only that, Miller is heading something called Democrats for Bush.

"I was born a Democrat, and I expect I'll be a Democrat until the day I leave this Earth," Miller said last week at the kickoff of Dems for Bush (at least according to a transcript helpfully provided by the president's reelection committee). "But I have grown mighty frustrated with the direction my party has taken over the last few years. National Democratic leaders today are moving further and further away from the principles that made our party great."

Miller, the former governor of Georgia, says he finds little to like about his Senate colleague, John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) -- not on economic policy, or health care or national security.

But Kerry's campaign accuses Miller of being a wee bit two-faced. They even came up with a catchy anti-nickname: Zig-Zag Zell.

Kerry's people point out, for example, that Miller praised Kerry in a speech in 2001 as "one of this nation's authentic heroes" who has "worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment." Kerry and Miller have also had identical Senate voting records on intelligence funding, and both voted for increased defense spending in 2002.

Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter offers this sound bite: "Zell Miller's new leadership role will be a lonely post."

It used to take months, or at least a few weeks, to conceive, produce and broadcast a political TV commercial. But this is the age of the insta-ad. Now the margin is down to days, maybe hours.

Case in point: MoveOn PAC, the political arm of that pesky liberal outfit MoveOn.org, which had an ad off the drawing boards in what seems like record time.

The ad uses anti-Bush comments made by former White House anti-terrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke on "60 Minutes" last week ("Frankly, I find it outrageous that a president is running for reelection on the grounds that he'd done such great things on terrorism. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11"). It lays text of this quote over images from President Bush's own campaign ads, including a controversial shot of the destroyed World Trade Center.

MoveOn PAC's ad guys came up with a script on Monday. The storyboards were ready by Tuesday. An e-mail soliciting donations and linking to the storyboards was sent to MoveOn.org's members by Wednesday. By Thursday, the organization had raised more than $300,000 from 21,000 donors. By late Friday, the ad was in final production. It will air -- voilà! -- starting this week on CNN, the organization says.

"This is politics catching up to the 24-hour news cycle," says MoveOn PAC's executive director, Eli Pariser. "It used to be that there was a gap -- by the time you came up with a message and got it out, it was outdated already."

Not any more, apparently.

And now, the politics of being a frequent flier.

Republicans used to complain that President Bill Clinton used Air Force One as his personal campaign plane, taking many official presidential trips that had no real purpose other than to raise reelection funds or drum up votes.

But President Bush has been on the go even more than his predecessor, according to an analysis by Brookings Institution visiting scholars Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Anthony Corrado and research intern Emily Charnock.

In his first three years in office, Bush took 416 trips to 46 states, compared with Clinton's 302 trips to 40 states during a similar period. Virginia was Bush's most visited state (not surprising, since presidents often take day trips across the Potomac for public events).

More notable, the scholars found, was the heavy proportion of Bush travel to "swing states" -- those where the vote margin in the 2000 election was within 6 percentage points.

Tenpas and Corrado found that 39 percent of Bush's trips were to swing states, compared with 28 percent for Clinton. Bush, for instance, took 27 trips to Pennsylvania -- more than to any state other than Virginia and California. Next up was Florida, the most swingy state of all last time, with 24 Bush visits. Texas, Bush's home, was fifth, and Missouri, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio and Georgia rounded out the top 10.

"[Richard Clarke] is, you know, a career chair-warmer who is upset a black woman took his job."

-- Ann Coulter on MSNBC Friday

"Do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African American woman Condoleezza Rice?"

-- Robert Novak on CNN Thursday

Staff writer John F. Harris contributed to this report.