There are many, many people on both sides of the aisle who could be assigned credit and/or blame for our present moment, but in my opinion, one of the towering architects of 2025 is a man who never even lived to see the 21st century: Harvey LeRoy “Lee” Atwater.
For those too young to remember Lee Atwater and those who only half-remember him as a Doonesbury punchline, allow me to take you on a brief and upsetting journey into the past.
Born in 1951 in Atlanta, Georgia, Lee Atwater would grow up to become one of the preeminent Republican campaign consultants of the 1980s. He started his political career with the South Carolina Republican Party in the 1970s, becoming an active participant in campaigns for folks like Sen. Strom Thurmond. It was here that Atwater began honing his greatest skill: manipulating voters by appealing to their emotions with controversial wedge issues.
For example, in 1980, Atwater was a campaign consultant to South Carolina Republican Congressman Floyd Spence, who was running against Democratic nominee Tom Turnipseed. Atwater sent out fake surveys to suburbs that served as a Trojan horse meant to inform white voters that Turnipseed was a member of the NAACP. He sent out letters from Strom Thurmond shortly before the election stating that Turnipseed would disarm the U.S. and hand it over to Communists and liberals. He also planted a fake reporter at a press briefing who rose from his seat to ask about Turnipseed’s history of psychiatric treatment.
Floyd Spence won the race.
After that, Atwater headed to Washington and became an aide to Ronald Reagan. By 1984, he was the Reagan campaign’s deputy director and helped run a smear campaign against Democratic VP pick Geraldine Ferraro, publicizing that her parents had been indicted for running numbers in the 1940s. The day after the ’84 election, he became a senior partner at the consulting firm of Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly. By the way, the “Manafort” and “Stone” at that firm were Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, so that should give you some idea of Atwood’s peers.
Perhaps Atwater’s greatest claim to fame is the infamous Willie Horton ad of 1988, in which Atwater managed to inextricably link Democratic Presidential nominee Michael Dukakis to William Horton (he never went by “Willie,” contrary to the ad), a black convicted murder who committed rape, assault, and armed robbery while on a weekend furlough from prison. That race-baiting ad may well have cost Dukakis the election (Atwater also spread rumors that Dukakis’ wife Kitty had burned a flag to protest the Vietnam War and that Dukakis himself was mentally ill, which also didn’t help).
Atwater played a significant role in legitimizing the use of half-truths and outright lies on the campaign trail and punching below the belt whenever possible. Perhaps most importantly, he was a pioneer when it came to winning votes by playing to racist voters without actually using overtly racist terminology.
What do I mean by that? I’ll let Atwater speak for himself. The following is a direct quote from a once-anonymous interview that Atwater gave to political scientist Alexander Lamis in 1981. In the interview, Lamis asked Atwater about Reagan’s Presidential campaign and how Reagan managed to capture George Wallace voters (read: racists) in predominantly southern states without being perceived as overtly racist himself.
Atwater replied: “Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, ’n****, n***, n***.’ By 1968, you can’t say ’n***’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me? Because obviously sitting around saying, ‘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****.’ So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.”
I realize that’s an upsetting quote. If it makes you feel any better, Lee Atwater has been dead for 34 years.
However, Atwater’s legacy lives on, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Politicians generally don’t use racial slurs anymore — for the moment, at least. Instead, they use the same abstract, coded language that Atwater addressed.
Woke.
CRT.
DEI.
The next time you hear a politician talking about how we need to root out any of these three things, just mentally slot in the word they’re really using. Finally, you’ll have heard an honest politician.
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