Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991 TAG: 9303190523
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
"Barbara and I lost a great friend in Lee Atwater," said President Bush, who chose Atwater to manage his 1988 presidential bid and then to head the GOP. "The Republican Party will miss his energy, vision and leadership."
For Harvey LeRoy Atwater, the pursuit of politics was crowned with victories but clouded by controversy and criticism. Without ever holding public office or even seeking it, he became one of the nation's most prominent political figures, rising from the back rooms of local politics in his native Columbia, S.C., where he will be buried Monday, to the inner councils of the White House.
Along the way he left his personal mark on American politics, for better in the view of Republicans who shared in his success, but for worse in the view of Democrats who were victims of his slashing style.
"While I didn't invent `negative politics,' I am among its ardent practitioners," Atwater once said. Looking back on the tactics he pursued in 1988, he said: "Frankly, I didn't care what anyone called me so long as we won."
But the pain and finality of his affliction caused Atwater to reconsider his philosophies in the closing months of his life. Recalling that in the 1988 campaign he had vowed to "strip the bark" off Democratic standard bearer Michael Dukakis and "make [convicted killer] Willie Horton his running mate," Atwater told Life magazine: "I am sorry for both statements, the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not.
"Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I treated everyone who wasn't with me as against me."
Dukakis said Friday: "We obviously were on opposite sides of a tough and negative campaign, but at least he had the courage to apologize. That says a lot for the man. My heart goes out to his family."
Atwater is survived by his wife, Sally, and their three daughters.
"We should all remember the picture of bravery and regained perspective Lee brought us over these past months," said Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown.
Former President Reagan, in a statement issued Friday, called Atwater "a true patriot" who "never lost the will to fight."
Before he became ill last March, Atwater was the de facto leader of a generation of Republican strategists who cut their teeth in the divisive politics of the 1970s and came of political age with the Reagan revolution in 1980. Exceptionally candid, colorful, inquisitive and the master of his own charm, Atwater was considered by many to stand head and shoulders above the pack of Washington political operatives.
Atwater's specialty was the conversion to the GOP of once-loyal Democratic voters through the political use of such social issues as crime, gay rights, school prayer and abortion. He thrived on the development of such "wedge" issues to separate voters from their historic allegiance to the Democratic Party and to build a conservative alliance between white populists and the country-club elite.
In part Atwater owed his celebrity to his provocative and complex personality. He was intense, steel-willed and infinitely restless. Even when seated his body was always in some form of motion. He talked in bursts and was given to biting rejoinders and harsh rhetoric that fostered his reputation as a master of political negativism.
When a political opponent complained that Atwater had spread the word that the opponent had undergone electroshock therapy, Atwater replied disdainfully that he saw no need to respond to someone who once had been "hooked up to jumper cables."
Though winning at politics was the focal point of his life, he also had deep fascination with music. His earliest ambition was to be a jazz musician, and he made an imprint on the Bush presidency by organizing and performing with his electric guitar at a post-inaugural rhythm-and-blues concert.
Atwater was quick to grasp the potential for combining communications and polling techniques to gauge and manipulate voter attitudes. After getting a bachelor's degree from Newberry College in his home state, he earned a master's in mass communications from the University of South Carolina, then spent years in the political trenches, learning how to use opinion polls and focus groups to sharpen the point of political commercials and exploit the opportunities to win attention from the media.
"Republicans in the South could not win elections simply by talking about various issues," he said. "You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, is a bad guy. . . . You simply could not get out in a universe where 60 percent of the people were Democrats and 28 percent Republican and win by talking about your issues."
Atwater was in the midst of preparing for the 1990 congressional campaign when the illness that ended his career and his life struck him in March of last year. He suffered a seizure and collapsed while he was addressing a group of party fund-raisers here.
The brain tumor was found to be inoperable.
by CNB