Lee Atwater

THE PRINCE

RED, HOT, BLUE, AND CHANGED!

THE LIFE OF LEE ATWATER WRITTEN JUST BEFORE HIS DEATH

"I know you're not interested in a government job, but you and the Republican National Committee thing would go well together. How do you feel about heading it up?" asked President George H. W. Bush to his jogging partner one morning.

"I'm honored, sir," answered Lee Atwater,⁽¹⁾ the new political golden boy of the city of power on the Potomac. This Columbia, South Carolina, native is now chairman of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., and is a risen star in the galaxy of government, or, as some believe, a powerful gladiator in the dangerous political arena.

He'll be thirty-nine years old this year 1990, but at this young age Atwater has lived a lifetime. Until he was eighteen, Atwater's only goal in life was to play the guitar,⁽²⁾ touring the night spots of South Carolina, sometimes playing backup for blues band man Percy Sledge.⁽³⁾ Then Lee Atwater spent a summer internship with South Carolina's senior senator Strom Thurmond,⁽⁴⁾ and he was hooked on politics. Little did the Democrats know that their worst nightmare had just popped out of the political womb. In 1978 Atwater was the chief strategist in the reelection campaign of Strom Thurmond, and in 1980 he directed Ronald Reagan's South Carolina campaign for President.⁽⁵⁾ Then Atwater made his march on Washington, working during the Reagan administration in the White House political office, moving after a few years to get a partnership in one of the hottest GOP consulting firms in Washington.⁽⁶⁾ Election year 1988 and Vice President George Bush made him Republican national campaign chairman, and 1988's political boy wonder received praise from even the other side. "He's run as flawless a campaign as I've seen," said Robert G. Beckel, who managed Walter Mondale's 1984 debacle.

The man is a scholar. With his office walls covered with portraits of Confederate heroes,⁽⁷⁾ Atwater never travels without Clausewitz' On War, and Sun-Tzu's The Art of War. Atwater says those kinds of books teach him strategy and effective command.⁽⁸⁾ He boasts of having read Machiavelli's The Prince dozens of times,⁽⁹⁾ and, in fact, he is said to read it twice a year.⁽¹⁰⁾ Although he went to Newberry College, he received his doctorate from the University of South Carolina recently. His dissertation is The Permanent Campaign.⁽¹¹⁾ Atwater's dissertation supports the necessity of obtaining an ongoing political network⁽¹²⁾ of voting patterns in order to control government for many years. Atwater concludes that Republicans can control the White House and possibly the Congress well into the next century if they can command the attention and favor of the young voters now.

However, this political prodigy is not all books and theory. He's a "frenetic extrovert,"⁽¹³⁾ a "wiry man who always seems to be jumping with nervous energy."⁽¹⁴⁾ He is part owner in an Arlington, Virginia, rib joint called "Red, Hot, and Blue."⁽¹⁵⁾ Atwater is "rooted in rhythm and blues."⁽¹⁶⁾ At the Inaugural he put on a rhythm and blues evening which the President attended. Atwater likes raw Chicago blues which makes a rapper "look like he's singing madrigals."⁽¹⁷⁾ He has been called the incarnation of Mean Country South in the tradition of the blues song "Black Mountain Blues." "Bound for Black Mountain with my razor and my gun/ Gonna cut him if he stands still and shoot him if he runs."⁽¹⁸⁾ This somewhat describes Atwater who sometimes "comes close to negative campaigning and dirty tricks."⁽¹⁹⁾

Lee Atwater has an uncanny way of getting under the facade of his political opponent, dismembering him, and coming away untainted. Such was the case when he ousted Vice-President Bush's only serious Republican competition in 1988 by branding Jack Kemp a cheap politician. However, his Machiavellian techniques backfired with Speaker of the House Tom Foley, when a Republican National Committee memorandum insinuated that the venerable Speaker was a homosexual. Written by an underling, the memorandum by its nature fixed its reproach first to the RNC chairman; and a military commander sometimes has to take the blame when one in his care makes a mistake, as Atwater has learned from Sun-Tzu. When Atwater found out about the memorandum which emerged from rumors of the Democratic side, he became angry saying: "Its a bunch of Democrats and a bunch of liberals who want me to go. I feel flattered. I must be doing something right."⁽²⁰⁾

His first job as Republican National Committee chairman was to reach out to minorities. Bush claimed only 10% of the black vote in November 1988. Atwater believes that doubling it to 20% would allow the Republicans to control the White House until 2000.⁽²¹⁾ Instead of bridging the racial gap, Atwater had to resign his trusteeship at the nation's most distinguished black university, Howard in Washington, D.C., when students filled the administrative building with shouts of "Just say no to Atwater!"⁽²²⁾ The Republican chairman promised to support "'affirmative action in its traditional sense' and opposition to South African apartheid."⁽²³⁾ The future will tell what Atwater and the Republicans will do in regard to their promised Rainbow Republican party.

Lee Atwater is a man of politics, but he is not interested in the spotlight. "I don't want to become a statesman or a national celebrity," he said.⁽²⁴⁾ He's in politics for politics, and he'll be around to give many a Democrat a headache for a long time. "I'm a thirty year man," he said.⁽²⁵⁾ For this Machiavellian prince, politics is not a way to a highly paid lobbyist's job, "it's his life's work."⁽²⁶⁾

But there is more to Lee Atwater than even he ever dreamed. He's thrown everyone on the political diamond a curve ball. A month ago he was of the stock that would waylay a man on that political highway from Jerusalem down to Jericho, but today, he is that Samaritan who stops to bandage the political victim's wounds. After collapsing during a speech on March 5, 1990, doctors last week found he has a "non-malignant brain tumor."⁽²⁷⁾

"What I'm going to do is take a new approach to how I proceed, because politics is people. . . . I have a better sense of fellowship with people than I've ever had before." This week, Atwater met with his mentor, Harry Dent, author of Nixon's 1968 "Southern Strategy" who is a committed Christian. "There's not a better fellow to talk to when you're down and out," Atwater said. Indications are that Atwater has encountered Jesus Christ. Of course the print medium would not today admit that he has found Christ, but phrases from the March 17, 1990, newspaper give it away. Atwater's words tell the story, "I realize now I'm down here on somebody else's turf, and that you're not your own." The interviewing reporter "suggested that Atwater sounded like an entirely different person." Atwater said, "Forget money and power . . . I had no idea how wonderful people are. I wish I had known this before." And he continued: "I'm just humbled by it all."

This attitude is a shock to everyone who has known Atwater for the last few years. One of these is

" . . .Sam Tenenbaum, a well-heeled Columbia Democratic businessman, who has accused Atwater repeatedly of engaging in dirty tricks to undermine opponent campaigns.

"'I don't know of anyone who has tried to cause me as much political harm as Sam Tenenbaum. But if I saw him right now, I'd hug him around the neck. I'd give him the warmest hug I could give him,' Atwater said."⁽²⁸⁾

Does this sound like a sane man to you? No, rather, it sounds like a fool for Christ. Has this Machiavellian trickster prince come face to face with the Prince of Peace?

1. John McLaughlin, "Atwater to the Rescue," National Review. January 27, 1989, p. 54.

2. Richard Fly, "The Guerrilla Fighter in Bush's War Room," Business Week. June 6, 1988, pp. 92, 96.

3. McLaughlin, p. 54.

4. Fly, p. 92.

5. F. Barnes, "Republican Dirty Tricks," New Republican. July 27, 1987, pp. 18ff.

6. Fly, p. 92.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., p. 96.

9. Barnes, p. 18ff.

10. McLaughlin, p. 54.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Fly, p. 96.

15. McLaughlin, p. 54.

16. Murray Kempton, "The GOP Blues," New York Review of Books, March 16, 1989, p. 4.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Fly, p. 96.

20. Gloria Borger, "Anatomy of Smear," U.S. News and World Report, June 19, 1989, pp. 40-41.

21. Kempton, p. 4.

22. "Now Willie Horton Stalks the GOP," U.S. News and World Report, March 20, 1989, p. 13.

23. Ibid.

24. Gloria Borger, "Ambitious visions for a GOP Majority," U.S. News and World Report, January 23, 1989, pp. 18-19.

25. McLaughlin, p. 54.

26. Ibid.

27. "Atwater: 'I can't imagine getting back in a fighting mood,'" The Greenville News, March 17, 1990, pp. 1A, 9A.

28. Ibid.