Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 7, 1991 TAG: 9104070238
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBIN TONER New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Whenever President Bush stumbled, or the White House botched a deal with Congress, or a Democrat drew blood, some Republicans would sigh and say, "This would not have happened if Lee were still around."
It was an image Atwater spent his adult life developing: the partisan warrior, the ice-water strategist, the man who would do what was necessary to win.
He had just turned 40 when he died the morning of March 29, but the South Carolinian had developed an extraordinary - and fearsome - mystique in American politics. His passing leaves a hole in the Republican political operation, and perhaps equally important in the party's psyche as well.
The Republican Party has a seasoned cadre of political strategists; part of what accounts for the party's consistent success in presidential elections is the sheer number of battle-tested veterans in its ranks, particularly when compared with the Democrats.
Bush chose to replace Atwater at the Republican National Committee with something of a political novice, Clayton Yeutter, the former agriculture secretary. But the 1992 Bush campaign will be run by the re-election committee and the White House, probably by campaign veterans like Robert Teeter.
For all of that, Atwater had an almost visceral grasp of politics that his party will sorely miss. He also had what the old pols called a love of the game, and he played it with a level of energy and aggressiveness that built a fierce following among Republicans - and left many Democrats rattled and simply afraid. At times he seemed his party's id.
"He was high-voltage," recalled Mary Matalin, chief of staff at the Republican National Committee. "In his presence, everything buzzed."
Tony Coelho, the former House Democratic whip, said, "He was the spark plug for the Republican Party."
Atwater embodied an era in American politics, a time when negative campaigning became the norm and political consultants became ever more sophisticated at charting the voters' anxieties, hopes and fears.
It was an era of Republican dominance in presidential politics, when many voting groups that had long been Democratic suddenly were pried away - often with emotionally charged issues like crime. The once solid South began delivering huge majorities for Republican presidents.
The party itself took on a decidedly Southern inflection.
Atwater was a part of all these changes.
"Lee understood better than anyone the extreme importance of controlling the South for Republicans in presidential elections," said Earl Black, an expert on Southern politics at the University of South Carolina and a former teacher of Atwater's.
"And I think he understood that the way to do that was to find ways to get these huge white majorities, to take the Republicans out of the country club to the blue-collar workers. He was just a natural. He understood what motivated people positively and negatively."
His critics said Atwater succeeded by appealing to people's darker instincts, including their racial fears. That assertion was fueled by the 1988 Bush campaign, which Atwater managed and which repeatedly highlighted the case of Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who escaped on a weekend furlough under the administration of Bush's opponent, then-Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Horton later raped a white woman and stabbed her fiance.
But even aside from the question of race, Atwater probed rough currents in the public's mood. A few weeks before he first collapsed from the brain tumor that ultimately would kill him, he sat in his office at the Republican National Committee and sketched a vision of American voters.
"They don't think they're getting straight talk from politicians," he said. "They don't think they're getting straight talk from the press. They don't think they get straight talk anywhere, really, in their lives." Their conclusion was simple, Atwater said: "Bull permeates everything."
Atwater was consumed with keeping voters of the baby boom generation in the Republican coalition, even though they might disagree with the party's stance on social issues, like its opposition to legalized abortion. Shortly before he fell ill, Atwater had begun to soften the Republican image on abortion, presenting the party as "a big tent" with room for differing views.
"Lee could turn off the ideology and just sit down and analyze," said Black - an important ability in a party with as sprawling an ideological coalition as the Republicans.
Beyond the political impact of Atwater's illness and death, however, was a personal tragedy that resonated throughout Washington among Republicans and Democrats in the small, clannish world of political professionals that Atwater dominated.
"In this town, you're not supposed to show any side of you that's soft," said Coelho. Atwater had taken the mystique of hardball to a new level. Over the past year, many political professionals seemed to be struggling to comprehend his sudden, achingly poignant vulnerability.
In a first-person account published in Life magazine this year, Atwater apologized to some of his old opponents, including Dukakis. He said his illness had helped him identify and understand what he had earlier sensed stirring among American voters - a yearning for connection, a sense of spiritual emptiness.
Friends said his mind kept working even as his body failed, and he could still, from time to time, bring what he called "command focus" to politics. Matalin, one of the band of young political strategists who rallied round Atwater, said she talked with him about the 1992 campaign a month ago.
"It was like his last gift to me: It was intense, it was focused, it took a lot of energy out of him, and when he was done, he was done. And we just sat there for about 20 minutes," said Matalin, refusing to discuss the encounter any further. It was the day of Atwater's 40th birthday.
by CNB