Documentary Atwater "his corrosive vision has seeped into the nation's political groundwater."

[Cell Whitman]

New documentary looks at Lee Atwater.

It always amazes me when the pundits and the public complain about how our political discourse has turned to crap - like we don't know why. Sure, there has been negative politics since day one but we have watched negative politics become the norm over the last 30 years in particular. This happened as result of the Republicans realizing they would NEVER control the House/Senate again - or for sure all three branches of government as they did in 2001 - without tearing the whole country down. Today, McCain has made outright lying his primary campaign tactic.

To be fair, it wasn't just Atwater. The person considered the father of the individual attack ad was man less known, Terry Dolan. Dolan was a competitor of Karl Rove's within the cesspool known as the College Republicans. Dolan was funded by the man whose hand has been behind the rise of today's "new" right, Sun Myung Moon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092504489.html

'Boogie Man' Lee Atwater: Truly Scary

In the can't-look-away documentary "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story," the career of the wildly successful, and wildly controversial, late Republican political operative comes back to us in ways that are funny, sad and mean. There is more than one moment in this film that will likely pop your jaw open.

Consider then-Secretary of State James A. Baker eulogizing Atwater at his 1991 funeral as "Machiavellian . . . in the very best sense of that term." (My dictionary defines the term as "characterized by unscrupulous cunning, deception, expediency or dishonesty.")<...>

He helped perfect the ugly art of "wedge issues" and "driving up the negatives" on opposition candidates. He helped perfect the ugly art of "wedge issues" and "driving up the negatives" on opposition candidates. Entertaining, guitar-playing, insecure and hardworking -- he delighted in achieving a victory through fair means or foul --<...>

Atwater's single most notorious bit of work came during the 1988 campaign, in the form of the Willie Horton ad used against Dukakis. <...> Atwater said he was going to make Horton Dukakis's "running mate."

The ad pretty much became the touchstone for demonizing black men in political campaigning. In archival footage, we see Atwater denying that he or the Bush campaign had anything to do with the ad, insisting he'd never even seen it.

Then Forbes cuts to one of Atwater's friends describing how, before the ad was ever aired, Atwater called him into his office, showed him the ad, said he was going to set it up as the work of an independent committee (and thus, with no fingerprints) and asked what he thought. <...>

Atwater died of a brain tumor at 40. Near death, he apologized to Dukakis and others for his tactics. Some people in the film believe he was sincere and some don't.

What is clear, from watching this talented man and his view of politics and America, is that his corrosive vision has seeped into the nation's political groundwater.

a little on Terry Dolan:

Charlotte Hayes, who wrote a hilarious and snarky memoir in The New Republic entitled "I was Moonie Gossip Columnist," still laments the loss of the generous expense account she had at the (Washington Times). "This is on the Rev.," Hayes, a thoroughbred conservative, would tell sources as she lunged for meal checks. "The Times," she added drolly, "is a place for free market conservatives to escape the free market." ...

Some insiders say that the Unification Church was the number one contributor to conservative causes throughout the 1980s. In 1984, the church gave $750,000 to the Conservative Alliance, a group spearheaded by the late Terry Dolan. It was a transaction riddled with irony: the Church fiercely condemns homosexuality and Dolan, a closeted gay man, was already sick with AIDS. Two years later the church bailed direct-mail king Richard Viguerie out of financial trouble with a whopping $10 million. Observers saw the transactions as a reward for a long friendship; Viguerie handled the Church's direct mail business since the late '60s. In 1988, the church made a $50,000 contribution to George Bush's re-election campaign.

(From “Moonstruck: The Reverend and his Newspaper” by Ann Louise Bardach, an article that was originally to have appeared in Vanity Fair in 1992 but was killed by the publication. The article finally saw print when included in the book Killed, Great Journalism Too Hot to Print by David Wallis, pages 137-165.)