ORIGINAL SIN, Chapter Seven

Lee Atwater's infamous Willie Horton campaign ads got Geroge Herbert Walker Bush elected 43^rd President of the United States in November of 1988, winning 426 electoral votes over Micheal Dukasus's 111 electoral votes. However the popular vote was much closer, with Bush winning by only 8.5 million out of the 91 million cast. But it was enough to be spun as a landslide. Lee Atwater was rewarded by making him Republican National Chairman. He could now the stamp of his personality on the entire party. And he began doing that immediately.

Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you...So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and...cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites....So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.”

Lee Atwater

Atwater's first target was the new Democratic Speaker of the House, Tom Foley from the state of Washington. He had voted for the Voting Civil Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968, the bill making Martin Luther King's junior's birthday a federal holiday, and he help override President Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.

The very day Foley was sworn in as Speaker, the RNC released a memo written by Communications director Mark Goodin and Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. It was vintage Atwater, and was titled, “Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet”. The memo compared Foley's voting record with that of Congressman Barney Frank, who was openly gay. Of course, as both men were Democrats, it would have been shocking if their voting records had been in conflict.

When challenged by the press Atwater insisted the memo was factually accurate”, but the the party leadership condemned the gay bashing of an old colleague, even if he was a Democrat. Senator Bob Dole called the the memo “garbage”, and the press corps refused to repeat is homophobic hints. Realizing Lee had gone too far, President Bush forced Atwater to fire Goodin. But as he had his entire life, Atwater gave ground grudgingly. 

“I’ve always thought running for office is a bunch of bullshit. Being in a office is even more bullshit. It really is bullshit,” he wrote. “I’m proud of the fact that I understand how much BS it is.”

Lee Atwater

Then on 5 March, 1990, Atwater collapsed at a fundraising breakfast and suffered a seizure. A CatScan discovered a grade 3 astrocytoma brain tumor. Despite aggressive treatment, including experimental radiation implants, the boy wonder was left paralyzed on his left side and in sever pain, with the cancer having spread. Still he would not resign as chairman of the RNC.

Soon afterward, Lee was visited by the ninety year old conservative Jesuit Priest Father John Hardon,  According to Hardon, “I introduced myself and then began the shortest instruction in the faith that I have ever given.” The instruction in Catholicism was, in total, about ten hours, over two days, provided to a very sick man. But Father Hardon also added, “every minute that I was in Lee’s room, there was someone from the Republican Party. So Lee was never left alone with me.” Hardon also said, “...it was very clear that he was in what I would call protective custody.” His keepers were, the Republican party, and one is left to wonder if they feared this conversion might be real, leading to even a semi-public confession.

Aware that he was dying, Lee Atwater began to write letters of apology to many of his victims, and others visited him in the Washington D.C. hospital where they gave him comfort by accepting his words. But he spent most of the last year of his life confined there.  But he did not resign from the RNC until January of 1991.  Father Hardin insists Lee converted to Catholicism, and was presented with a bible. Atwater died on March 29, 1991. He was 40 years old. However Lee Atwater's funeral service was held in a Protestant Church, and he was buried in a Protestant graveyard.

After Atwater's death, Bush White House Communications director Ed Rollins (above) told Mary Matalin, who ran the RNC for the year Atwater was in the hospital, how much comfort Lee had drawn from the bible he received from Father Hardon's organization. But Matalin responded, “Ed, when they were cleaning up his things afterwards, the bible was still wrapped in cellophane and had never been taken out of the package.”

Since his own death, Father Hardin, is being groomed for sainthood, despite his being disciplined for allowing a priest who molested children being given access to even more children. For that moral failure the Jesuits forbid Hardon from teaching at any Jesuit institutions. Father Hardon referred to this punishment as his “white martyrdom.”

Almost every acolyte of Lee Atwater moved on to support Donald Trump in all three of his runs for President. Roger Stone (above, center), who learned hatred and manipulation at Atwater's feet, described his teacher this way, " “We both knew he believed in nothing....I had the feeling that he sold his soul to the devil, and the devil took it."  Another student, Tucker Eskew said that after Lee, "Resentment became the future of the Republican Party."

And whatever damage that Trump does to the American political and moral soul, should be laid at the cold dead feet of Lee Atwater and those who invited him to enter their house.

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Six

 

"In recent years, I have come to believe that “conservatism”....has become an arrogant defender of ideological excess and entrenched interests and privileges...(of) Wall Street, Big Energy, multinational corporations, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Religious Right, the Market Extremist think-tanks, and the Rush Limbaugh Axis...."

Kevin Phillips “Why I am No Longer A Conservative” 7 October, 2002

In the early summer of 1988 Lee Atwater (above, right) asked twenty-eight year Republican “operative” Roger Stone (above, center) to come to his Washington, D.C. Office. According to Stone – who is far from an unimpeachable source - Atwater locked the door of his corner office and then popped in a video tape. Atwater said, “`I got a couple boys going to put a couple million dollars up for this independent.'' He meant the ad had been funded by a political group with no ties to the Bush campaign. But the fact that Atwater, who was running the Bush campaign, had an advanced copy of the 30 second spot belied any claim the two groups were working independent of each other.

At 18 years of age Roger Jason Stone (above, right) had cut his dirty tricks teeth on Nixon's 1968 campaign. Before the New Hampshire primary Stone made a donation to one of Nixon's Republican competitors in the name of “The Young Socialist Alliance”, than passed the receipt for that payment to the conservative Manchester Union-Leader newspaper, which eagerly smeared the unwitting target. 

Stone became such a Nixon loyalist, he had “Tricky Dick's” face tattooed across his back. Stone insisted he did nothing illegal during the Watergate scandal, but when it later became public he was working for Senator Bob Dole, Dole felt forced to fire him. Seeking a legitimate income source Stone formed a political “consulting” firm with old friends Charlie Black and Paul Manafort and later, Lee Atwater.

Stone  (Above left) was recruited for the 1980 Reagan campaign, learning from, among others, the infamous Roy Cohn (above, right) , who had been the brains behind Republican Senator Joe McCarthy.  As an operative, Stone admitted delivering a cash filled suitcase to a lawyer representing the Liberal Party of New York. 

In the 4 November general election Reagan beat Democrat Jimmy Carter in New York by just 165,000 votes. Liberal Party candidate John Anderson siphoned almost half a million votes, ensuring Reagan won New York's 41 electoral votes. Not that Reagan needed them that year. But in any case, Lee Atwater knew fully well who he had invited to view “his” commercial.

What came to be called the “Furlough” ad began with pictures of George Bush and Micheal Dukakis side by side. The narrator began, “Bush and Dukakis on crime.” Now only Bush's face was center screen. “Bush supports the death penalty for first degree murderers,” said the narrator.

Now only Dukakis' image appeared. “Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first degree murders to have weekend passes from prison.”

Now the grainy booking photo of William Horton taken from the foot of his bed in the hospital ward, appeared. Horton seemed to be gazing down at the viewer, his tall “Afro” hair defiant, his eyes clouded with pain killers. Intoned the narrator, “One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times.” 

A photo of Horton being moved in police custody was then shown. “Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison.” 

Then, as each additional offense were named, the key words appeared on the screen. “ Horton fled”, said the voice.” KIDNAPPED a young couple, STABBING the man and repeatedly RAPPING his girl friend.” 

Then Dukakis' face appears again, under first the words (also spoken by the narrator) “Weekend prison passes” and then the words, “Dukakis on crime.”

Nothing stated in the ad was untrue. But according to Stone (above), his reaction was immediate. “That's a huge mistake”, he claims to have told Atwater, “You and George Bush will wear that to your grave. It's a racist ad. You're already wining this issue. It's working for you. You're stepping over a line. You're going to regret it.'' 

 According to Stone, Lee Atwater responded at the time, ``Y'all a pussy.' But for every Republican who seems determined to argue into perpetuity that the ad is not racist, the first reaction of Roger Stone stands unchallenged – if he said it - “It's a racist ad.”

Whatever the truthfulness of Stone's version of events, something caused Atwater and or Ailes to contact the National Conservative Political Action Committee, whose name was on the ad. NCPAC was the 2 year old creation of Floyd Gregory Brown, out of Oregon. He had raised enough money through direct mail and telephone marketing to bring himself to the attention of conservative billionaires like Charles and David Koch, Robert Mercer and Peter Thiel. These wealthy extreme conservative contributors had pumped $9 million into NCPAC, and saw that it hired its most important employee, Larry McCarthy. The “Furlough” ad was physically his creation.

Lawrence C. McCarthy was Brooklyn born. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1974, he worked for several Republican congressmen, on their campaigns and as a press officer. Then in 1981 he became a senior executive for Roger Ailes. Late in 1987, however, Larry abruptly shifted to working for NCPAC. The separation from the Bush Campaign and Roger Ailes was thus no more than one degree and just a few weeks in time.

Larry McCarthy now re-edited “Furlough”. In the new version the in-hospital booking photo of William Horton was completely absent. It was replaced by a longer hold on the middle distant image of Horton in police custody. It was this new “Furlough” which was presented for “clearance” to the advertising directors of the various television stations and cable systems. 

Once they had cleared that version for broadcast, McCarthy then substituted the original “Furlough”, containing “Willie's” ominous image.

Any skepticism about the overt racist message of “Furlough”, or the more subtle version of the coming “Revolving Door” ad, should be buried six feet deep along with the later obfuscation, denials and justifications by Lee Atwater (above),  Roger Ailes and all future generations of Republican apologists. The only reason for a “Cleared” copy and a “Broadcast” copy of “Furlough” was that, in 1988, both conservatives and liberals damn well knew the party was selling racism.

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Five

 

“More than likely, the Bush campaign used the racial facts of the case intentionally...as part of the overall strategy to recruit white voters without drawing the ‘racist’ label. Atwater (above) ...was a white man raised in the Deep South…who was accustomed to referring to black men with overstated familiarity.”

Tali Mendelberg Professor of Politics, Princeton University. 2001

The location chosen to shoot the ad was the 37 year old Utah State Prison in Draper (above). The prison had experience working with film production companies, including “Halloween 4”. The weather was reliable and there were support services (film laboratories, editing facilities, local air freight) 20 miles to the southwest in Salt Lake City, and the Utah Film Commission was friendly to Republican ideology. 

 The script for the spot titled “Revolving Door” was written by Milwaukee ad man, Dennis Frankenberry (above) and his firm of Frankenberry, Laughlin and Constable. Later he told an interviewer, "Fortunately, we were in a position to commit our resources to the campaign just then." In truth his availability had been created by his conviction for drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident having caused bodily injury,  And that is how a white man who had received the benefit of work furlough during his sentence, was able to "commit resources" to create an advertisement which would bring an end to furloughs for thousands of prisoners - most of them black.  D.L. and C. hired a production company called “The James Gang”  out of Dallas, Texas, , run by conservative photographer James Beresford,  to actually shoot the spot.

Ominous drum roll. Quick Fade In Long Shot. The camera pulls back from a guard carrying a rifle as he climbs the watch tower outside of a prison. Title fades in, reading, “The Dukakis Furlough Program”, then fades out quickly. Narrator: “As governor, Dukakis vetoed mandatory sentences for drug dealers.” Dissolve to a Long Shot of a rifle carrying guard walking along a fence line. Narrator: He vetoed the death penalty. His revolving door prison policy....”

Dissolve into a Medium Long Shot of a line of prisoners walking away from the camera toward a fence. In the center of the fence is a glass revolving door. A line of prisoners, heads down, pass through the door and then continue walking back towards the camera. Narrator: “...gave weekend furloughs to first degree murders not eligible for parole.” 

Title fades in across the lower center of the screen: “268 escaped”. Narrator: “While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape”. Fade in a tighter medium shot centered on the revolving door.

A title card fades in lower center of screen “Many are still at large.” Narrator” And many are still at large.” Quickly fade out title. Narrator: “Now, Micheal Dukakis, says he wants to do for America...” Dissolve to a Long Shot of a guard with a rifle standing on a roof, with the guard tower in the back ground. Narrator: “...what he has done for Massachusetts”. Dissolve in Bush/Quayle claimer across the bottom of the screen. Narrator: “America can't afford that risk.” Quick Fade to Black.

The revolving door was a prop, built in Salt Lake City and assembled a day early at an angle between two gates in the third, outside fence line. Some 50 members of The Young Republicans attending Brigham Young University and The University of Utah were recruited to act as prisoners. None of the actors or crew had any contact with the general prison population. And the actual shoot was accomplished in a single day.

During the shoot Dennis Frankenberry made at least one alteration to the “shooting script”. Among the endless line of down faced prisoners, one, and only one - a black man with a neat low Afro haircut - was instructed to glance upward as he exited the revolving door. He was the only “prisoner” who did anything different from the others, making him an immediate focal point. In order to increase the impact of the spot, during editing it was decided to drain the color from the film, so in its broadcast version it was gray sepia tones, as if it were a 1960's news documentary.

Denials of racism being used as a tool by the Bush campaign are belied by the close coordination between the two spots. They were a one two-punch, one to to the jaw and the second to the breadbasket. The more blatant ad, “Furlough”, began running on Wednesday, 21 September, 1988. The following night CBS News reported on the new commercial, describing it as “crime ad”. Race was not mentioned at all.

The Furlough ad ran for 2 weeks, ending on Tuesday, 4 October. The very next day, Wednesday, 5 October, “Revolving Door” first aired. CBS did not mention either ad again until 20 October, and this time the story concentrated on William Horton's criminal record. Complaints about the racist context to the ads would not be mentioned on CBS until 24 October, three weeks into the “Revolving Door” ad run. CBS only review of the content of the ads was a comment by media consultant Tony Schwartz, who described the ads as “particularly effective”. Why they were effective was not mentioned. This at a time the average television and newspaper newsrooms  had few blacks in editorial positions.

After the campaign, Larry McCarthy, the creator of the “Furlough” ad, described William Horton as “...every suburban mother’s greatest fear.” By suburban, he meant, of course, white. And the Federal Election Commissions investigation of the ads, demanded by the Democratic party and the NAACP was forced to admit that Roger Ailes “may have implicitly communicated to Mr. McCarthy”. But any further questions were cut off by the Republicans who made up half of the commission.

Bill Keller, who edited an investigation of the Horton story for The Marshal Project, would later point out, “The astounding fact is that, at the time, all 50 states had furlough programs for prisoners, including for murderers in many states. Even Ronald Reagan, when he was (Republican) Governor of California, had a furlough program...twice, inmates who were out on furloughs...committed murders. Reagan defended the program and said nobody’s perfect.”

Keller went on to describe William Horton as “...a convenient tool in a kind of politics that at the very least was fear mongering and I think fair to say race baiting. I think it had echoes of the earlier Southern strategy of Republicans, which was to play on white anxiety.” I would say not an echo, but a maturing clarion call to white power and what would become in another thirty years as the Republican base.

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Three

 

“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Lyndon Baines Johnson 1964.

It's poison bore fruit again in 1951 and in South Carolina. Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater was born on 27 February, in Atlanta, Georgia, but in April his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina (above). 

And on 12 July, William Robert Horton was born near the little segregated sand hill farming town of Chesterfield, South Carolina (above). Lee Atwater was white. William Horton was black. But it was the personality traits they shared which shaped the story that would follow.

William's father was a trash collector and an alcoholic. When William was 5 the police locked up his father for shooting his mother. Shortly thereafter the battered Mrs. Horton left the little boy with his maternal grandmother and disappeared. William grew up in a state still tied to cotton, hand picking it or processing the crop in local textile mills. Despite being warned he would end up on a chain gang like his father, William Horton dropped out of school in the 8^th grade.

In 1956 Lee Atwater's father - an insurance adjuster - moved his family to the Savanna River town of Aiken, on the Georgia border, just down the street from ex-Governor Strom Thurmond. Lee trick-or-treated at Thurmond's home and remembered, "He came out and gave me a Snickers candy bar. That was the best thing I got that year.” Working after school, the hyperactive Lee seemed destined for success, and when his 8^th grade class took a trip to Washington, D.C., Lee Atwater (above) posed sitting at the feet of Senator Thurmond.

William Horton was first arrested at the age of 15 in 1971. He was convicted of breaking and entering, and served 6 months in a juvenile facility. Shortly after his release he was arrested again for assault with a knife, with intent to kill. This time he served 3 years in a penitentiary. Upon release William left South Carolina and headed north to connect with family. 

In 1974 he was charged with 11 offenses in and around the old mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts (above)  including public drunkenness, assault and battery and selling drugs.

After high school, Lee Atwater attended a private Lutheran college in Newberry, and in 1968 helped register voters pledged to support Richard Nixon. But as his younger brother Eric pointed out, party philosophy held little interest to Lee. “He liked politics because he could kick the other guy's ass.” Then in 1973 Atwater transferred to the University of South Carolina. A college girl friend recalled, “...the opportunist in him...would almost always overrule the nice guy...” 

That year Atwater ran the campaign that elected his friend Karl Rove (above) as President of the College Republicans. In 1977 Lee Atwater graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Master's degree in Communications.

Jp

About 9:30 pm on Saturday, 26 October, 1974, William Horton along with two other drug dealers, Alvin Wildman and Roosevelt Picket,  left a party in Lowell, Massachusetts. Fifteen minutes later their car was seen parked near the Mobile gas station on Marston Street. 

About 9:50 pm the attendant, 17 year old Joseph Fournier (above), was found stabbed 19 times in the neck and chest. He bled to death, stuffed bent double into a trash bin with his feet against his face. The total amount stolen from the station was $276.37. In September 1975 Horton and the others were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Lee Atwater (above right) confessed, “I probably would have never even gotten into politics if it weren't for Strom Thurmond (above, left) .”  It was at Thurmond's suggestion that 36 year old State Senator Carroll Campbell hired Atwater to manage his 1978 campaign for the South Carolina 4^th Congressional District seat. His Democratic opponent was the popular mayor of Greenville, Max Heller. There was also a third party candidate, an itinerant preacher named Don Spouse. 

Polling indicated Heller had a 14 point lead until the final week, when Spouse held a well attended press conference to announce, “I believe in Jesus Christ...Mr. Heller does not.” Spouse added that a Jew should not represent South Carolina. Spouse won only 1,693 votes, but Campbell beat Heller by 5,893 votes. Lee Atwater later took credit for recruiting Spouse, who never ran for office again.

In the summer of 1979 Ed Rollins (above, right) was hired to assemble a staff for Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential campaign. He remembered, “ Strom Thurmond was trying to get Lee a job.” Rollins agreed to interview Atwater (above, left),  and was surprised. “Here's this young kid without a real resume...but there was something about his eyes. He had these piercing eyes...the eyes of a killer.” Rollins hired Lee as a political consultant.

William Horton's first months in prison were difficult, and he was written up almost a dozen times by the staff. But by his 6^th year William had become a model prisoner. Beginning in 1985 William Horton was given 10 two day furloughs. Most state prisoners at the time were eligible for weekend furlough programs, as a way of rewarding good behavior and to further rehabilitation.  Massachusetts was the only state which extended this privilege to convicted murderers. 

The on 6 June, 1986 William went on yet another furlough. He saw a movie and stopped at a convenience store, where he bought a winning lottery ticket. The money funded a drug binge, which led to William crashing a car. Horton now ran. Using buses and stolen cars he got to Florida, where he found construction work. A year later William lost his job, and moved to Baltimore where he stayed with friends, until the 4th of July weekend of 1987,  when he went looking for a house to break into in Maryland.

In the March 1980 South Carolina Republican primary, Ronald Reagan (above, right) had two opponents – John Connally and George Bush.  Lee Atwater (above, center) “leaked” negative stories about both sides to both sides.  Connally supposedly tried to buy 100,000 votes from black churches, and Bush was accused of being a member of the infamous “Trilateral Commission”.  Lee Atwater would later claim, with some support, to have played both sides against the other, so that Reagan would win what the Washington Post described as a “mean and dirty”, campaign, “'..in the worst tradition of the politics of the Old South.” 

In November of that same year Lee confessed to winning another election via a smear, “Well, I said that he had been hooked up to jumper cables, in reference to a bout he had with mental illness in college...”

It would be foolish to assume that William Horton  (above) committed only those rapes and assaults for which was arrested and convicted, such as the July 1987 break-in assault and rape of Angela Miller and Clifford Barnes. 

It would be equally foolish to assume that Lee Atwater was responsible for all of the reprehensible attacks he would later claim credit for. However it also seems obvious these two sons of the Palmetto state shared a certain set of personality traits - they both, “habitually and pervasively disregard or violated the rights and considerations of others without remorse.”

The 5^th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says persons such as Atwater and Horton, “...may be habitual criminals....or they may...manipulate and hurt others in non-criminal ways which are widely regarded as unethical, immoral, irresponsible...Those with APD often possess an impaired moral conscience and make decisions driven purely by their own desires without considering the needs or negative effects of their actions on others.” The syndrome is defined as antisocial personality disorder.

It was the decision of the Republican party to accommodate racism in order to assemble a winning coalition. It was the choice of the Republican party to elevate those with an “impaired moral conscience” to leadership roles because they produced success. The profit from those decisions would be reaped in the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century by Ed Rollins (center) and Lee Atwater (right).  And the bill would be deferred until the second decade of the 21^st century, delivered by Republican operative, Roger Stone (left)

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