Poppy Bush’s campaign manager Lee Atwater repented after he was stricken with an inoperable brain tumor at the age of thirty-nine.
“In 1988,” Mr. Atwater said, “fighting Dukakis, I said that I ‘would strip the bark off the little bastard’ and ‘make Willie Horton his running mate.’ I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not.”
He also said this:
“In part because of our successful manipulation of his campaign themes, George Bush won handily,” Mr. Atwater said. He conceded that throughout his political career “a reputation as a fierce and ugly campaigner has dogged me.”
“While I didn’t invent negative politics,” he said, “I am one of its most ardent practitioners.”
Noting this history, I still think Assrocket provides some context to Atwater’s most famous quote.
“You start out in 1954, by saying n*****, n*****, n*****. By 1968, you can’t say n*****, that hurts you, back-fires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights, and all that stuff and you’re getting so abstract. Now you’re talking about cutting taxes. We want to cut this is much more abstract than even the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than n*****, n*****.”
If you look at the totality of the interview in which Atwater made that statement, it becomes clear that he wasn’t endorsing that point of view.
Yet, if you look at the totality of Atwater’s career, it doesn’t seem like it matters what he endorsed. He knew that his tactics were racist, which is why he felt guilty and why he apologized.
I don’t know what people like Assrocket (ant Atwater) think racism is. It’s like if it’s not ‘I burn crosses and scream obscenities at every black person I meet,’ it’s not racism.
He thinks that this proves there’s no racism in Atwater’s quote: “And subconsciously maybe that is part of it, I’m not saying it.”
It’s wonderful that overt racism is no longer socially acceptable, but ‘racist’ has become such a toxic label that white people recoil at the slightest suggestion that it might apply to us. So we’ve defined it as such a narrow, pure, evil that we’re let completely off the hook.
His tactics weren’t racist, they exploited the latent virulent or benign, conscious or unconscious background racism of US society to add people to the Republican base. Conservative Democrats used to appeal to outright bigots, but after World War II and knowledge of the Holocaust that approach was “not nice”, so the same conservative Democrats appealed to the segregationist status quo folks with Calhounian arguments. Then the civil rights movement and the alliance of moderate and liberal Democrats destroyed de jure segregation. The conservative Democrats became Republican and tailored their appeal to the white flight urban ethnics and Catholics everywhere. But it played always on the background racism that existed everywhere in America. Thinking it got kinder and gentler misses the point, as you point out about Atwater’s actions.
BTW, exploiting the latent worst nature of people without necessarily subscribing to those views oneself is likely the more contemptible.
Atwater was born in 1951 in Atlanta but grew up and was educated in SC. He was 10 when the Freedom Riders, including John Lewis were set upon by mobs. The 1963 Birmingham Church bombing, the murders of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman and of Medgar Evers, the March on Washington and all the subsequent drama including the assassinations somehow washed over and through Atwater’s consciousness in such a way that he could “exploit” racism but not be racist?
No. He was there. He lived it. He worked around and for men like Strom Thurmond. He knew exactly what racism was; how it crippled lives and murdered people. Atwater chose a side in the unfinished struggles for civil rights and equality and he did more than 100 David Dukes to re-entrench racism and white supremacist thought.
“You shall know them by their fruits.” Atwater was a racist.
He knew what outright bigotry was. He knew what defense of segregation was. He knew when to lie low like Strom Thurmond did in the 1970s, appointing a black Congressional aide.
America is racist, either repentantly so or unrepentantly so. Atwater was an unrepentant racist for his whole life. So are a lot of folks today in Boston, Chicago, and even (horrors!) San Francisco.
If you think I’m cutting him a break, you are mistaken.
Like Louise Day Hicks, Atwater not only was a racist, he used racism to build political power.
But Atwater built political power for his clients using appeals to conscious or unconscious racism and received a hefty salary for himself and his family.
Yes, he did more than David Duke to entrench racism by helping the elections of Reagan and Bush and the gradual capture of the media by conservatives. And that matters more in the scale of history than whether he himself thought minorities were inferior or whatever other measure of personal racist behavior you want to use.
And he did more damage because he was able reinstitutionalize racism outside the Southern states. In the 1970s, the racism was hidden and the institutions that supported it were being dismantled. In the 1980s, they came roaring back, thanks to Lee Atwater.
All that money didn’t mean that much to him when he was on his death bed.
LOL! Reagan’s campaign wasn’t racist and didn’t have a racial element?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan's_Neshoba_County_Fair_%22states'_rights%22_speech
Yeah ok.
I wouldn’t call that an apology. It’s more like expressing regret because he’s facing judgement day. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the snake that he took so much pleasure in being.
Taking advantage of racism for political (or personal) gain, even if you don’t buy into the ideological underpinnings, is still racist as hell. Being a con artist is not a mitagating factor.
Nearing the end of his life, Atwater said “My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The ’80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.”
It’s impossible to know whether he was sincere or merely trying to vindicate his legacy. However, it’s never easy to admit one’s mistakes so I lean strongly to the former. Beyond that, it’s not my place to judge. Only God knows what’s in a person’s heart. I’m content to leave it at that.