This is a reminder. The excellent Frontline documentary Boogie Man by Stefan Forbes is still running on PBS. You can Google it to see when it's playing in your area. There are a few snippets online here, but it's nothing like watching the whole thing. http://www.pbs.org/...
For those who haven't caught it yet, this must-watch documentary tells it like it was and is about Republican demagoguery. Atwater's protege Rove is in it. http://www.pbs.org/... W. is in it. W.'s father is in it. The Gipper is in it. Nixon is in it. Practically the whole Republican family, post-Ike and post-Goldwater, is in it.
There is something elemental about the Republican strategy of winning at all costs. The story involves many Faustian transactions that lead far too many Republicans on a one-way trip up the river into the heart of darkness. The story is a stark reminder of why we have jails, and how when we fail to send people up the other river things can spiral out of control.
Roger Ebert captures the essentials of Stefan Forbes' documenary on Lee Atwater:
A plausible case can be made that Lee Atwater was the greatest single influence on American politics in the last 40 years. He was instrumental in the elections of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Karl Rove and Bush 43 were his proteges. It is universally acknowledged that Atwater wrote the modern Republican playbook. "If he had lived," a friend believes, "Bill Clinton would never have been elected president." http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/...
We've just been through a Presidential election and two terms of a Presidency in which we have seen the ugly legacy of Atwater. We saw how McCain turned his campaign over to the Rove thugs when he was losing.
We also saw how Democrats like Obama and others, however, are finally waking up to the fact that we must fully understand the Atwater/Rove phenomenon to beat it back with new counterinsurgency techniques. And now with Obama's victory we have an opportunity to put a stop to the burst of evil in the Republican Party.
Yesterday I wrote about the Fox Republican tactics in taking down a promising Democratic politician in Alabama. http://www.dailykos.com/... This is just one example of how the Fox Republicans today are just like Atwater. Taking down Governor Don Siegelman in Alabama is just like what Atwater started to do to then Governor Bill Clinton in Arkansas before Atwater died a premature death. Clinton survived though ultimately his Presidency was tarnished by Atwater's ilk in the Republican Party. Siegelman fell even quicker.
One of Atwater's friends in the movie sums up Atwater and Rove in a few words. He says Atwater lost his soul. Traded it in. Gone. The same is so apparent in today's Republican Party and the fops (Fox-Republican officials and politicians - I am sorry that I have to write it that way, but they deserve to be called what they are).
Even Novak, the late Republican Prince Pundit of Darkness himself rest his soul, admits in a mumble in this movie that Republicans don't care about the truth or principles, and Democrats do.
This movie is about the line, the line in politics, the unspoken line which should not be crossed. That line is somewhere between the truth and a lie. But it's still there. Cross it too far and you never come back. The souls of so many of our rich and powerful Republican friends have crossed far into that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.
There is something elemental here. At the end of his life Atwater frantically sought forgiveness for his evil life. One wonders if he or his soul made it back to humanity, a herculean journey given the magnitude of the harm and injustice caused.
For those who are not religious, the reference to souls is about what makes us human. Call it God given, call it given by evolution or chance; however it came to us, however it continues, we are all part of life and all connected in some manner to each other. For example, for better or worse, here we are all Americans.
I for one am sorry for the evil the Republicans like Atwater and Rove have done for on some level they are me. But a take away from this documentary is that politics in America should involve to a much greater degree enforcing our system of justice on those politicians who act as if they are not constrained by the laws we entrust them to enforce or to legislate.