Web Links to Atwater articles



Here are some interesting Atwater links on the web.

Here’s Lee’s Wikipedia entry:

Harvey Leroy “Lee” Atwater (February 27, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was a political consultant and strategist to the Republican party in the United States. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Newberry College, a small private Lutheran institution in Newberry, South Carolina.
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 invented or improved upon many of the techniques of modern electoral politics, including promulgating reputation-destroying rumors.

Atwater was also a musician. He briefly played backup guitar for Percy Sledge during the 1960s and frequently played with bluesmen such as B.B. King. Atwater recorded an album with King and others on Curb Records in 1990 entitled Red Hot & Blue[2]. His life is the subject of the feature-length documentary film Boogie Man.[3]

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From an article on PoliticalMavens.com:

Clinton as Atwater By Lloyd M. Green

The proximity between the first hardball dustup of the 2008 campaign (Clinton - Obama - Geffen) and the sixteenth anniversary of Lee Atwater’s death crystallizes something. Former President Bill Clinton is the Democrat’s incarnation of the GOP’s master of smash mouth politics, Lee Atwater. Clinton’s observation that “Your opponent can’t talk when he has your fist in his mouth” could have been uttered by Atwater himself.

In the minds of the Clintons and the Democratic Party, the Republican electoral triumphs of the 1980’s were the result of Atwater’s ability to brawl, as opposed to being the by-product of better ideas and a more widely appealing philosophy.

Harvey Leroy “Lee” Atwater managed George H. W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign. Atwater then served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee, until he died at the age of 40 of brain cancer in March 1991.

Strong language and verbal intimidation were Atwater’s suit, just as it appears to be Bill Clinton’s. During the 1988 campaign, Atwater promised to “strip the bark off”of the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. On the morning talk shows Atwater would ridicule Dukakis campaign manager and then-Harvard Law School Professor Susan Estrich, leaving Estrich either speechless or stammering.

Atwater and Clinton both loved the spotlight, living large and self-aggrandizement. Each man had an ear for music and an eye for human frailties. Atwater was famous for jamming with B.B. King and Rolling Stone Ron Wood. Bill Clinton will be remembered for playing the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show. Atwater dropped his pants for Esquire Magazine. Clinton entertained the question of boxers or briefs on MTV.

Both men were Southerners, and each knew a thing or two about the power of race and politics. Atwater led the Bush campaign attack on Michael Dukakis, as he hammered away at the Massachusetts furlough program and Willie Horton, a convicted murderer and rapist. In a speech given before the 1988 Democratic Convention, Atwater declared that Horton “may end up to be Dukakis’ running mate.”

Clinton played those same cards, albeit with greater aplomb. During his 1992 presidential bid, Clinton, then still Arkansas governor, presided over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, an African American who was convicted of murder. Rector had an IQ of approximately 70 and was on antipsychotic medication at the time of his execution.

Later during the same campaign, Clinton delivered an attack on Sister Souljah at the Rainbow Coalition. Instead of being pummeled by the press as Atwater was, Clinton was lionized by the media. Joe Klein wrote that the Democratic Party “has come to seem craven, weak and untrustworthy in the process. The only exception to this pathetic tradition was Bill Clinton’s criticism of Sister Souljah’s racist rap lyrics during the 1992 presidential campaign . . . .”

These days, it appears that Hillary Clinton is trying to emulate her husband, if not Atwater. In a speech before a predominately African American church in Selma, Senator Clinton peppered her speech with a Southern drawl — a far cry from her flat Midwest intonation.

Clinton and Atwater were bound by more than regional prejudice or cadence. Both men knew how to ingratiate themselves with men more powerful and wealthier than they. As a student at Georgetown University Clinton interned for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which was then-chaired by Arkansas’s J. William Fulbright. A Fulbright aide, in turn, played a role in Clinton’s avoiding the draft.

As president, Clinton gravitated toward the money and glamour of Hollywood. Indeed, David Geffen’s abandonment and rebuke of the Clintons is a reminder of the symbiosis between the Clintons and the Democratic Party, and the entertainment industry.

Atwater had his own powerful patrons, notably the late South Carolina U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond and former President George H. W. Bush. Thurmond placed Atwater in the Reagan White House. From there Atwater went on to the 1984 Reagan reelection drive, and the 1988 Bush presidential campaign.

For the whole article on the similarities between Bill Clinton and Lee Atwater , go here.

 

Here’s a great article by Boogie Man interviewee Eric Alterman about Lee Atwater in the New York Times.

IT’S 2 A.M. ON A SULTRY SATURDAY IN COLUMBIA, S. C. Does the Republican Party know where its chairman is? Harvey Lee Atwater, hometown boy, is on stage at Bullwinkle’s, a smoky dive with two pool tables, dollar beers and the raunchy, long-haired Mojo Blues band shaking the rafters.

The overflow crowd is packed against the wall, forcing overdressed Republican gentry to rub elbows with the Bullwinkle regulars. Atwater has changed out of his blue blazer and tie into a ”Late Night” T-shirt that David Letterman gave him. His guitar was a gift from Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones - a souvenir of Atwater’s gala blues celebration at a Presidential inaugural ball.

Drinking beer straight from the pitcher, sweat pouring down his face, Atwater apologizes for going home so early, but the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is just seven hours away and he is the grand marshal. His final number is a repeat of his opener: Eddie Taylor’s ”Bad Boy.” ”I’m bad, I’m bad,” cries the man who masterminded George Bush’s 1988 Presidential campaign, ”I’m the worst you ever had.”

A Republican national chairman like no other before him, Lee Atwater is undoubtedly the most controversial and successful political operative in America. Nominated by President Bush for the top G.O.P. post just eight days after the election, Atwater is, at 38, the first professional campaign consultant to head either political party. Known as a hardball specialist and a virtuoso in the art of negative campaigning, he has demonstrated a singular ability for hammering away at sensitive social issues that drive a wedge between traditional Democratic constituencies.

Atwater’s appointment has energized the Republicans and galvanized the opposition. One group of incumbent Democratic senators recently organized a seminar on political campaigns ”in the age of Atwater.” In the contest for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, former Congressman Michael Barnes advertised himself as the ”ex-Marine who is taking on Lee Atwater.” In early March, more than 3,000 students at Howard University, the nation’s premier black school, occupied Howard’s administration building and demanded Atwater’s removal from the school’s board of trustees.

Spending an extended period of time in his company, one begins to wonder whether there are, in fact, two Lee Atwaters occupying the same body. The first Lee Atwater is every inch a political operative. A visionary, ruthless strategist, Atwater has risen to the top of a cutthroat business by working harder, doing more research, incorporating more sources and, when necessary, cutting more throats than the competition. This Lee Atwater reportedly walked into Bush campaign headquarters last summer and announced that the time had come ”to scrape the bark off” Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

The second Lee Atwater is a true-blue American archetype: a fun-loving, hell-raising Dixie party animal. ”Animal House” was not a movie for Lee Atwater; it was autobiography. Atwater was known in his own fraternity as the guy who stayed up singing and dancing until dawn and then ”woke up the day shift with a flip-top at 6.” Though he’s now a married man with two daughters and no longer drinks much, he’s still the kind of guy who will jump up to grab a pretty woman in a restaurant and sit her down at his table because a guest has noticed her looks.

Walking around the St. Patrick’s Day fair with Lee Atwater in 1989 is a little like cruising the Grand Concourse in the Bronx with Joe DiMaggio in 1941. Everyone in Columbia, it seems, went to school with Atwater, worked on a campaign with him or stayed up late to watch him play guitar on television. Atwater hugs the guys and kisses the women - often by way of introduction.

For the whole article, click here.