Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 2, 1991                   TAG: 9104020518
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LEE ATWATER/ BUOYANT, NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNER

But among modern practitioners, Lee Atwater - who died last week at age 40 from an inoperable brain tumor - was perhaps the most colorful, most candid and most effective.

Atwater gained wide prominence in 1988, as manager of George Bush's presidential campaign. Bush then named him chairman of the Republican National Committee, where Atwater served until illness forced him to step down.

Whether Bush could have become president without the South Carolinian at campaign's helm is, of course, impossible to know. But Bush went from underdog to victor by a comfortable margin, and the slashing nature of the political battle against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis clearly had an effect. Ultimately, some might argue in light of the subsequent careers of the two men, the effect was positive.

Perhaps. But even if you accept the assumption that Bush has made a much better president than Dukakis would have, it's questionable whether American voters gained such an insight from the nature of the Atwater-led campaign. For what in retrospect remains striking about that campaign is not its negative tenor so much as the triviality of the negativism. What does Willie Horton have to do with the presidency?

As his life neared an end, Atwater himself came to have second thoughts. He regretted the "cruelty" of a 1988 vow to "strip the bark" off Dukakis, he told Life magazine, and the "racist" sound of his promise to "make . . . Horton [Dukakis'] running mate."

Trivially negative campaigning demeans both candidates, and politics in general. Let Atwater's legacy not be the excesses of the '88 campaign, but his buoyant spirit and the sober reflections of his last months.