BOOGIE MAN: THE LEE ATWATER STORY (2008) (***1/2)

Before there was Karl Rove, there was Lee Atwater. Rove wouldn’t have even had a chance of getting George W. Bush elected if Atwater hadn’t gotten George H.W. Bush elected first. Being swift-boated was nothing like being Willie Horton-ed. Just ask Michael Dukakis.

Atwater had a passion for the blues, but he had a passion for power more and politics would provide that easier than music. In college, Atwater started his dirty tricks of having valid votes thrown out of the Young Republicans election, which ended in George H.W. Bush declaring Karl Rove the winner. Atwater only chose to be a Republican because there were less of them on campus and he could get further quicker.

He began his professional political career in South Carolina working for Strom Thurman. When Ronald Reagan was hurting in the Republican primary to Bob Dole, Atwater skewed Dole’s record and won the South Carolina primary for Reagan. The rest is history. When George Bush I decided to run for president, Atwater all but made himself his campaign manager. Barbara Bush never liked him, thinking he was crude and untrustworthy. This of course endeared him to the Bush black sheep, George Jr., who loved Atwater’s take no-prisoner politics. Bush learned from Atwater and helped teach Rove.

Atwater didn’t really know policy but be knew people. He knew they voted for their fears not their hopes. He also knew the whole political game was BS. Bush I was way behind Michael Dukakis until Atwater got to work. He made people believe that a governor voted against military spending. The infamous Willie Horton ads made Dukakis’s weekend furlough program was allowing killers to rape and murder families. He perfected the “push-pull” poll which would word questions in a way to create doubt in an opponent, such as “do you believe Governor Dukakis opposes saluting the flag?” Even allies weren’t immune to his tactics. He leaked rumors to the press that his boss Ed Rollins was working on a campaign to destroy Geraldine Ferraro’s political career.

As successful as he was he was an insecure man. A childhood tragedy where his younger brother pulled a pot of boiling oil off the stove, killing him, haunted Atwater his whole life. He always felt like he was going to be called out as a Southern hick when working with blue bloods like the Bushes, who he felt treated him like the hired help. But Atwater used opponent’s preconceptions of him as a slow, dimwitted Southern Republican so he could dance circles around them.

Then Atwater developed a brain tumor. Chemo and steroids bloated the thin energetic man into a bloated caricature of himself. He was quickly pushed out of power. People believe if he hadn’t gotten sick, there would have been no way Bill Clinton would have beaten George Bush I. But as he was dying, he rethought his ways. He sent apology letters to many people be felt he had wronged, including Willie Horton. But then some people think his death bed conversion was all BS as well.
Atwater was a complex and contradictory personality who influenced modern politics like no other figure. Thanks to him politics has become about wedge issues and reacting to overblown accusations and name calling. It is said that one Bible verse did strike Atwater strongly at the end – What benefit will it be to you if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?