Lee Atwater
Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater (
February 26,
1951 –
March 29,
1991) was an
American Republican political consultant and strategist. He was born in
Atlanta, Georgia.
Atwater was a trusted advisor of
U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and
George H. W. Bush. He was also a political mentor and close friend of
Karl Rove. Atwater's skills at attack politics brought him and his candidates success. His opponents characterized him as "the
Darth Vader of the
Republican party". Atwater was also a musician, and frequently played with bluesman such as B.B. King.
Atwater's aggressive tactics were evident in 1980, when he was a consultant for Republican candidate
Floyd Spence in his campaign for Congress against Democratic nominee
Tom Turnipseed. Atwater's tactics in that campaign included
push polling in the form of fake surveys by "independent pollsters" to "inform" white suburbanites that Turnipseed was a member of the
NAACP. He also sent out last-minute letters from Sen.
Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) telling voters that Turnipseed would disarm America and turn it over to liberals and Communists. At a press briefing, Atwater planted a "reporter" who rose and said, "We understand Turnipseed has had psychotic treatment." Atwater later told the reporters off the record that Turnipseed "got hooked up to jumper cables" - a reference to
electroconvulsive therapy that Turnipseed underwent as a teenager.
"Lee seemed to delight in making fun of a
suicidal 16-year-old who was treated for depression with electroshock treatments," Turnipseed recalled. "In fact, my struggle with depression as a student was no secret. I had talked about it in a widely covered news conference as early as 1977, when I was in the South Carolina State Senate. Since then I have often shared with appropriate groups the full story of my recovery to responsible adulthood as a professional, political and civic leader, husband and father. Teenage depression and suicide are major problems in America, and I believe my life offers hope to young people who are suffering from a constant fear of the future." [
1]
Ed Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign, tells several Atwater stories in his 1996 book,
Bare Knuckles And Back Rooms. According to Rollins, Atwater ran a dirty-tricks operation in 1984 against vice-presidential nominee
Geraldine Ferraro. This included the allegation that Ferraro's parents had been indicted for numbers running in the 1940s. Ferraro disappeared for a few days to 'recover' from the accusation. Rollins also described Atwater as "ruthless," "Ollie North in civilian clothes," and one who "just had to drive in one more stake."
Atwater's most noted campaign was the
1988 presidential election. A particularly aggressive media program, including a television advertisement related to the case of
Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who subsequently committed a
rape while on a furlough from a
life sentence in a Massachusetts prison, led to
George H. W. Bush overcoming
Michael Dukakis's 17-percent lead in early
public opinion polls and win both the electoral and popular vote. Although Atwater clearly approved of the use of the Willie Horton issue, the Bush campaign never actually ran a commercial with Horton's picture, instead running a similar but generic ad. The original commercial was produced by an ostensibly independent group managed by Floyd Brown, and the Bush campaign benefited from the coverage it attracted in the national news.
During the election, a number of false rumors were reported in the media about Dukakis, including the claim by Idaho Republican Senator
Steve Symms that Dukakis's wife
Kitty had burned an American flag to protest the
Vietnam War, as well as the claim that Dukakis himself had been treated for a mental illness. Atwater was accused of having initiated these rumors, although there is no direct proof that he did so.
During that election, future president
George W. Bush, the then vice president's son, took an office across the hall from Atwater's office, where his job was to serve as "the eyes and ears for my dad," monitoring the activities of Atwater and other campaign staff. In her memoir,
Barbara Bush said that George W. and Atwater became "great friends."
After the election, Atwater was named chairman of the
Republican National Committee. This appointment was controversial, but Atwater's time as chairman was short, for in
1990, he was diagnosed with an inoperable
brain tumor.
Shortly before his death from a brain tumor he said he had converted to
Catholicism and, in an act of
repentance, issued a number of public and written apologies to individuals whom he had attacked during his political career, including Dukakis. In a letter to Tom Turnipseed dated June 28, 1990, he stated, "It is very important to me that I let you know that out of everything that has happened in my career, one of the low points remains the so called 'jumper cable' episode," adding, "my illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything." [
2]
In a February 1991 article for
Life Magazine, Atwater wrote:
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and
moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this
spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.
As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to historian
Alexander P. Lamis. Part of this interview was printed in Lamis' book
The Two-Party South, then reprinted in
Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed. Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. Atwater talked about the GOP's
Southern Strategy and
Ronald Reagan's version of it:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964… and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, '
Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' [
3][
4][
5]
As a teenager in
Columbia, South Carolina, Atwater played guitar in his own rock band, The Upsetters Revue. His special love was R&B music. He released an album called "Red, Hot And Blue" on Curb Records, featuring himself with Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, Chuck Jackson, and, B.B. King, who got co-billing with Atwater. Robert Hilburn wrote about the album in April 5, 1990 the
Los Angeles Times: "The most entertaining thing about this ensemble salute to spicy Memphis-style '50s and '60s R & B is the way it lets you surprise your friends. Play a selection such as 'Knock on Wood' or 'Bad Boy' for someone without identifying the singer, then watch their eyes bulge when you reveal that it's the controversial national chairman of the Republican Party ... Lee Atwater."
During the 2000 presidential race, tactics that resembled Atwater's began to surface when Arizona Senator
John McCain's campaign entered the crucial Southern state of
South Carolina. Though no credible evidence has been uncovered, the "
whisper campaign" that damaged McCain's chances in that state is often attributed to
Karl Rove, a longtime friend (and student of Atwater's techniques in political "dirty tricks"), later named Senior Political Advisor to George W. Bush.
*
List of notable brain tumor patients*Lee Atwater and T. Brewster, "Lee Atwater's Last Campaign,"
Life Magazine, February 1991, p. 67.
*Tom Turnipseed, "
What Lee Atwater Learned and the Lesson for His Protégés,"
Washington Post, April 16, 1991, p. A19.
*John Joseph Brady,
Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater (1997), ISBN 0201627337.
*Alexander P. Lamis (editor),
Southern Politics in the 1990s (1999), ISBN 0807123749.
*Alexander P. Lamis,
The Two-Party South (1990), ISBN 0195065794.
