Transcripts For WMPT Frontline 20091007

>> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. with major funding from the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. helping to build a more just world. and additional funding from the park foundation. committed to raising public awareness. with additional funding for this program from the nathan cummings foundation; the independent television service, with funding from the corporation for public broadcasting; and by the lef foundation, and the paul robeson fund for independent media. >> narrator: tonight on frontline... >> another election with lies and swift boat politics... >> narrator: in the wake of another bitterly fought campaign... >> do we have to go to the lowest common denominator? >> narrator: the story of the man who wrote the book on hard- nosed politics. >> lee atwater used every conceivable trick. >> false rumors. >> ruthless. >> garbage. >> lee was the one who understood the country. >> narrator: republican strategist lee atwater ran george bush's controversial 1988 campaign. >> the american flag, the pledge of allegiance and prison furloughs. >> willie horton will become a household name. >> no more furloughs for people that rape, pillage and plunder. >> race is poison, but it's poison that works for their side. >> narrator: atwater hardened american politics... >> this political party was turned over to dirty tricks. >> narrator: and then, at the end of his life, asked for forgiveness. >> lee atwater was telling the truth when he said, "what i did was wrong. it was bad and bad for the country." >> narrator: tonight: "boogie man: the lee atwater story." ( drums banging ) >> okay, let's take the whole thing. ( guitar playing ) >> i, ronald reagan, do solemnly swear... >> i, ronald reagan, do solemnly swear... >> ... that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states... >> ... preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states... >> ... so help me god. >> ... so help me god. >> you ain't seen nothing yet. >> ♪ i'm a bad boy i'm a long, long way from ♪ home well, i'm a bad boy... ♪ >> can you understand american politics if you don't understand lee atwater? i believe not. >> he couldn't teach me rhythm, but he did teach the democrats to sing the blues, and i believe they're just starting. ( music playing ) >> he mattered in american politics, because of the man he got elected, because of the party he shaped. he was very important, not only to george h. w.'s victory, but to his son's victory. >> lee atwater was part myth, part showman and part political mastermind. he was one of the most unique people i've ever met in my life. >> rove was the protégé of lee atwater. how do politics really work? how does a presidential election really work? the depths of it deserves to be examined... closely. >> lee atwater grew up in a standard southern-looking white life. he pierced through all that. i would've loved to have seen this guy operate at the grade school level. i mean... ( laughing ) ...that's where you learn politics! >> he could just get a crowd into a frenzy. we were just a so-so band, but we had lee, the only guy i knew who could do a split. >> just think if you had stayed with the upsetters revue what you could've become. >> yeah, i could have been making $65 a night! ( laughter ) >> he took this one guy and ran him as president of the school, and nobody had ever had a campaign manager in high school. >> ( laughing ) and they won, you know? he figured out early on that "maybe i don't want to be the candidate, but the behind-the- scenes guy." >> well, i... i... i've always been anti-establishment. in south carolina, i just said, "well, if these guys are the democrats, i'm a republican." >> i asked lee, "why did you go the republican party, the fuddy dud, country club set?" lee said, "hey, man, i have a lot better chance at doing something in the republican party." >> if the grand old party stayed kind of grand and old, it wasn't going to be much of a party. it had to go young. without that, we would go into the wilderness. >> the power was just waiting to be wielded, and he was going to wield it. >> at newberry college, where i attend, we've signed up over 12,000 supporters for president nixon, which is a national record at this point, and... >> isn't it a shame that he didn't decide to become a democrat? because it would have been just as easy for him. he didn't believe in any of those things. i don't really think lee gave a ( no audio ) about policy. he liked politics because he could kick the other guy's ( no audio ). >> lee built an army of college republicans all over the state of south carolina. at first, he took over south carolina, and then... then went nationally. >> the liberal allegation has always been college republicans only care about the rich, or we're closet fascists, or we're people that hate the human race. >> free book if you sign up for islamo-fascism awareness week. >> lee atwater showed that you could be a college republican and be cool, have musical interest. you didn't have to wear a pinstripe suit or a bow tie. >> we are the grassroots force. you know, the liberals may have the unions, but we also have the college republicans. and we're hit with liberal bias from every single professor, so we know what we believe in. you can't learn these types of things in the classroom. it's tough and it's dirty-- or it appears to be dirty-- and karl rove is a shining example of the work that the college republicans can do. >> thank you. ( cheers ) >> 1973 convention-- it really is a seminal moment in this little out-of-the-way place with a bunch of college republicans who, at the time, seemed like the most irrelevant figures in american politics. college republicans was where i actually first met atwater. we were in different factions; he was in the... he was in the karl rove faction. >> i remember one of the greatest weeks of my life-- one of the wildest weeks of my life was spent in the company of lee atwater in a ford pinto. ( laughter ) >> rove was the protégé of lee atwater. he'd thought it was his turn to take over the national college republicans. the problem was, there was another guy named robert edgeworth who was actually the one in line to succeed. they got into a tremendous nationwide battle. >> this is the big showdown in my race for chairman, and all the bad guys are the other side. the vote count was evenly split and we were going to lose... >> it was pretty clear that edgeworth actually did have more votes. lee atwater and karl rove used every conceivable trick-- ballots are thrown away unfairly. >> there's nothing more vicious than a young republican fight-- nothing. nothing. >> the election was appealed to the republican national committee chairman, george herbert walker bush. history in the making. he gave the election to rove. you know, echoes of the 2000 election in florida, where the ballots are disputed and the supreme court makes the decision on a very dubious basis. that was a pretty early lesson for karl rove from lee-- that you could play the hardest of hardball and get away with it. >> i make no bones about who i am, what i am and what i do. if you are on the other team, i am going to try to beat you. >> lee sometimes reminded me of a... of a wolverine sort of chewing through the plywood. and he had a vaguely marsupial look about him, always sniffing the air. >> i've wondered about where lee's striving came from, what it arose out of. >> lee grew up in this brew of racial divides driving the country-- the role of the civil war, the south's rise from the ashes. at its heart, it's about learning lessons of defeat. >> the south is the only part of the united states ever thoroughly defeated and humiliated in war. it does create a very visceral backlash, and atwater was adept at tapping into that. it was a backlash against people who think they're better than you are. >> it's this cultural resentment that people in the south feel, because these liberals, these smart ( no audio ) run everything and we have nothing but contempt for them. lee's friends said, "you guys all think we're dumb. you have the same kind of prejudice against us that you accuse us of having against black people." >> "the big boys, trying to push us around, trying to remind us how much greater they are. we'll show them." well, lee had a "we'll show them" kind of strength to him that was about as wide as his backbone. resentment became the destiny of the republican party. >> i probably never would have gotten into politics if it weren't for strom thurmond, the personal interest he took in me and my career. >> before strom, he was, you know, "where's the next party coming? let's get drunk tonight." working for thurmond transformed lee. >> my grandfather hated strom thurmond with a passion, and i grew up with that same hate. and when i met lee, i knew lee was connected to him. he's a part of the system that hates us. >> good ol' strom. golly, 21 years old, has sex with the 15-year-old daughter of the maid there at his house and produces a child. and to come out and say that "blood will run before we integrate" personifies what we are talking about-- you know, the hypocrisy of racism. >> the south is afro-celtic-- it's where you find the celts settle and where the africans are. this is a place where the same person saying "yes, sir; yes, ma'am" can go out and get the lynch rope the next day! ( laughs ) so, i mean, the south is complicated. >> the south has got the same thing america's got-- a complicated history on race. there are reasons to hate things about the south, and still love the region and its people. i am not aware of any democrat paying attention to what lee really learned in his early races. they existed up in some elite layer of the clouds that had nothing to do with what moved people to feel. they slept while lee out- maneuvered them. >> in the congressional race, i was the democratic nominee. he came out and, in kind of an underhanded way, in a sense, he got a reporter to ask him a question about, "well, isn't it true that tom turnipseed had some kind of psychiatric problem as a kid?" he was the master at creating little juicy tidbits for the media. >> well, i said that he had been hooked up to jumper cables, in reference to a bout he had had with mental illness in college, which had been made public two years before, so i wasn't breaking any new ground. >> that got quoted all over to kingdom come down here. lee atwater said... accused tom turnipseed of being hooked up to jumper cables. >> ( laughing ) "hooked up to jumper cables"-- i'm laughing now, but it ain't funny. >> atwater's candidate won. >> it's so much easier to blame dirty tricks than it is to acknowledge hard work. did he give his opponents ammunition to criticize him for negative tactics? yes. does that obscure the fact that he outfoxed them at nearly every turn? not to those of us watching closely. ( laughs ) >> southerners like a good, hard-fought political campaign. he first made a name for himself on a race between carroll campbell and a democrat by the name of max heller. >> max heller had been a... immigrant. he was... as a jewish teenager, escaping hitler, and he was a popular mayor. >> lee was one of the first advocates of the push poll. the first few questions are routine; the next question is, "well, if you came to believe that governor x was a pedophile, would that change your opinion?" now, the poller hasn't said that governor x is a pedophile, simply planted the idea that if he were... >> they did a poll which asked, "would you vote for a jew who did not believe in the lord jesus christ?" no, they wouldn't. >> lee was accused of recruiting a third-party candidate-- or a redneck type candidate-- who made religion an issue in that race. said he entered the race on his own, but none of us really believe that. >> he had a press conference and he attacked max heller. >> i believe in jesus christ. i believe he died to save my sins. mr. heller does not. >> anything you want to know about me? >> i think i have heard quite a bit about you. what do you know about the lord? >> well, i... >> i'm a little prejudiced toward people in my lord. >> lee atwater's candidate won. he denied that he recruited this guy, but none of us believed it. lee atwater did not leave his fingerprints on his dirty tricks. he liked to take an issue and use it as a wedge-- abortion, he would use race. divide and conquer-- that's how lee atwater operated. >> reagan did poorly in new hampshire. i don't think ronald reagan would've been elected if he had lost the south carolina primary. it was pivotal-- reagan had to win. >> the reagan campaign needs operatives. lee atwater wanted to roar into washington and onto the national political stage. but you've got to get people to win big government office. >> lee atwater figured that connally was their biggest threat here in south carolina. lee leaked a story, to me, that john connally was trying to buy the black vote. that story got out-- thanks to me. and it probably killed connally. he spent $10 million for one delegate. lee saved ronald reagan's candidacy. a few years later, lee laughed about that story. he said "bandy, you got used." ( laughs ) >> anything goes. tell them what they want to hear. lie, cheat, steal. make it up, making up stuff. he used to go back into the room, making up these polls. i tell you, he'd come back with a poll in about half an hour. >> strom thurmond wanted to make a call to remind people what-all this boy from south carolina had done. it was in keeping with lee atwater's nature to have it be for something as big as getting inside the white house and playing at that level. this was a bigger challenge; this was a bigger prize. >> strom thurmond was trying to get lee a job in the white house, and now here's this young kid without a real resume. he came into my office. he was fidgety-- hands, legs, everything moving. but there was something about his eyes. he had these piercing eyes, that were, you know... as i have always thought, those... those are the eyes of a killer. this was someone who was going to get what he wanted. he said, "i'll give you 20 hours a day." i said to him, "i don't have a slot for you. i don't have a title for you. you're going to be at the bottom of the rung." in 24 hours, he figured out how to detail people and confiscate furniture out of other peoples' offices. >> we would be out there running around the memorials, and he's just, "this is where i make my living, the most powerful city in the world." >> he was grabbing as much life as he possibly could. everything that he ate, everything-- including ice cream-- he doused with an enormous amount of hot sauce. he searched the world to find a sauce hotter than the sauce that he had. tabasco was, to him, was for wimps. >> i watched him grow up. he was like a little brother. had great energy. no one will ever outwork him. he ate his meals there. he was there seven days a week. worked for me for a year, and one day he comes in to me and says, "i am bringing up my wife and my child." and i said, "lee, i didn't even know you were married. you never talked about them." he said, "you know, they're in south carolina. i'm going to bring them up." >> ♪ bright lights big city ♪ goin' to my baby's... >> his house was like a marx brothers movie. it was just chaotic. one cult movie after another-- zombies from outer space. he was always surrounded by an entourage. this is something he and his wife fought about. it was... i don't think they ever had any time alone for themselves and just with their family. >> a lot of families suffer in washington. there is nothing else that's important. if he could have slept on a couch and showered in the white house, he would have never gone home. >> i have met a million of them-- little political errand boy. very ambitious. a lot of people in washington are still ivy leaguers, this feeling of the snopes family had invaded, that he had gone too far, too fast. in the reagan administration, they didn't take him seriously-- he's a guy on the make, devious, manipulative. >> that need, that... that burning need to become something, and transform, and show them. lee was scrapping. what forces will drive this person to new heights or crash them to the greatest depths? he kept learning. >> i do not ever remember sitting in a meeting in which someone didn't bring up how such and such would play in the press. i think there is a preoccupation-- and justifiably so, once you understand the nature of power in america today-- with how "a story plays out on television..." >> here was this insecure kid that i'm sure, every day, had that imposter fear-- "is ed rollins going to fire my ( no audio ) today? will they find out that i'm really not a ph.d. candidate? is someone going to walk in here and say, 'it's all ( no audio ), lee. get the ( no audio ) out of here!'" anything he had access to, he would always give it to some reporter. everything was leaked. he was a big source-- he knows what they need. >> lee, what are you selling? >> nothing in particular. >> the national journal did a profile, and lee had written that he had a record of 26 and 0. i said, "lee, we have not won 26 races in the south since the civil war." i said, you know, what kind of bull ( no audio ) is that?" and he goes, "it's my record now. it's in the national journal." the media never caught on. he was a very good con man. >> the best political operatives make friends with the press. it's easy, if you don't watch yourself, to fall into that, particularly if you are dealing with someone that you like personally, because they like you. >> i must say, you are a very dapper dresser. >> thank you. you have the right collar, right tie with the suit, even down to the socks. >> well, thank you, i appreciate that. >> ( laughing ) oh, man, don't you know when somebody is gaming you? >> an operative never comes and says, "here is a story i'd like you to run for me, but just in private conversation, did you know this about so and so? we're still checking it, mind you, but its probably going to turn out to be true." well, you don't want to be beaten by your competition and wait 'til they announce it! they just put it on the conveyer belt and you just run it out. >> and i ain't going to sit here and spin y'all. this is a... this is a high quality news conference. ( laughter ) >> he was an attractive figure to cover, because he could wink and nod with the reporters, saying, "we all know what a phony deal this is, right?" he used his own cynicism to anesthetize people to what was going on. >> in college, lee totally detested sports, except wrestling. his thing was, "this is the only honest sport out there." ( laughter ) everybody knew wrestling was fake. >> he may have felt that wrestling was the only honest sport, because it was so obviously dishonest. what's there to entertain, what's there to distract is what counts. and actually, things are run in a much more cynical basis by the people at the top. >> he was basically saying that politics is phony. the government is phony. that a lot of personal life is phony. and "phony" was a big word with him. >> there's a bill in the senate called the clean campaign act of 1985. it's intended to restrict the so-called negative political advertising. >> what i think you would wind up doing, if this bill passes, is polluting the air with these kind of a candy cane type commercials that are ooey and gooey.vejj3 they are polluting the atmosphere more than anything else.y6 >> reagan benefited from having a scrapper to remind even some wavering republicans what they should fear. >> we had a kind of a rating scale of a one meaning that "this is kind of the guy you just go and blatantly intimidate in his district." >> the washington establishment begins to take notice. this southern-accented, fast- talking knife fighter-- even if you thought he was a rube, you did not take him lightly. >> ♪ bad man walking... >> i was appointed assistant to the president. a lot of people told me he wouldn't be loyal to me, told me not to pick him, but i admired his work ethic. i admired where he came from. how are we two guys here? my old man a shipyard worker from vallejo, california; your parents from south carolina. we're in the big leagues together. i made him my deputy. lee became my protector, my antenna. he was very loyal to me. i told him very early on, "don't you get any pipe dreams here that you're going to take my place, because you won't. we're a team." but if you looked in his eyes, you knew that this was someone who basically was going to get what he wanted. when he betrayed me in '84-- in the last four weeks of the campaign-- he had been involved with a producer for nbc, and so he came in to me one day and he said, "would you give them an interview?" nbc news led that night with the story that ed rollins is running a dirty ops operation. >> at the highest level... >> our sources, all top republican staffers, say there is an undercover operation led by campaign director ed rollins designed to undermine the mondale/ferraro campaign." >> took me 35 seconds to find out that, you know, he bought the producer in-- it was his old girlfriend. lee had put a spear in my back. the day i walked in his office after this thing, he thought i was going to beat the ( no audio ) out of him, and i told him, i said "you ever do anything like this again to me, i'll ( no audio ) beat the living crap out of you. i'll find your ( no audio ) and i'll beat the living ( no audio ) crap out of you." ♪ love is like a game but it's sharp like a razor blade ♪ love is like a game... >> it was just a two-year effort to destroy me. he wanted to run bush's campaign. he worked bush very hard. he said, "george w. never trusted you, so i kept feeding it." he clearly made it that i would never be anywhere in the bush world. >> everybody is jockeying for the great man's attention, and let me tell you, those knives flashed brilliantly for a year or so. >> i had put so much trust in him. in spite of everyone telling me you couldn't trust him, i trusted him. >> what creates somebody who's that cold-blooded are events in his background and his upbringing that leave them with a very bleak, remorseless view of life. >> he didn't talk about joe much. his mother, she had a deep fryer, i think, and full of hot grease. and the little kid, you know, he pulled on the cord, and pulled the thing over, and... you know, he didn't talk about joe much. >> the grease on the stove ended up on joe and it killed him. >> lee said he heard his brother's screams the rest of his life, every day. how haunting could that be? >> he believed that there was little or no mercy in life. what kind of god produces this? george h.w. bush, the good son of the establishment, of tremendous privilege and access to power and money. and here, lee atwater was the bad seed of the anti- establishment. i think there were times when he was brutally brought up short by the bushes; when lee may have been presumed to have been allowed into the mansion to sip the sherry. the bushes never regarded him as anything other than the hired help-- and a somewhat untrustworthy member of the hired help. they could always jettison him if they had to, cut him loose in a second. and lee was perfectly willing, because it gave him entrée to the world of power and celebrity that he so craved. >> lyndon johnson would humiliate his aides by having a meeting while he sat on the toilet and defecated. atwater decided to open his pants and urinate with an esquire reporter, david remnick. >> lee complained about this to me, because all he was doing was talking to the guy while he was taking a ( no audio ). and remnick wrote it up, and lee said, "what was i supposed to do? say 'this ( no audio ) is off the record?'" barbara bush was very offended by his vulgarity. it almost cost lee his job running the bush campaign. >> he had to overcome the family suspicion. "who was this upstart? he's a kid." so then, who arrives in town? george w. bush. the family liked the fact they had one of their own keeping a close eye on lee. >> and lee responded to that by saying, "why don't you come and work with me, work alongside me, in the office next to me? and let's work together in this campaign." >> so he's got a guy there who has lived a lot closer to the earth than some of his relatives. he and lee hit it off. ( applause ) >> a true test of a good campaign manager is to be able to figure out how to deal with my mother. would you please welcome a south carolina cracker, lee. ( applause ) >> they were a magnifying force; they were both deeply intellectual and well read and... >> atwater said he read four books a month. that was bull ( no audio )-- he didn't read one book a month. he had jim pinkerton read them and tell him what they said. he read, like, the cliff notes for four books a month. >> my number one soul mate and a guy who's with me, thick and thin, george bush junior. >> he's got mojo, leader of the next campaign. the eyes of the world upon you. this was a even bigger leap up. it's either going to make them master politicians or it's going to ruin them. it's either going to show their way to victory in the future or show them to the door. >> iran-contra must have been perceived by atwater as a very serious threat. one of the biggest scandals in american history, and your guy is in the middle of it. that's a big problem. >> a charge has been made that the united states has shipped weapons to iran, trafficking with terrorists. those charges are utterly false. >> it's a lie. it's a lie. presidents lie. >> we were selling them arms, which was a clear violation of the law. it was the boland amendment. you just couldn't do it. and ronald reagan went on television and went to the american public and said, "this never occurred." he came out months later and admitted... >> i told the american people i did not trade arms for hostages. my heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. >> "there were some renegades in the white house." he acted like he didn't know who was working in the white house. >> i didn't know about any diversion of funds to the contras. >> he deserves our support, not monday morning quarterbacking from people who were not faced with the decisions he had to make. >> you had the president and the vice president lying to the american people and the congress. documents being shredded in the white house. terrible violation of american values, american law-- you know, everything this country is supposed to stand for. >> vice president bush, did you know about the contra aid or not, sir? >> bush was really damaged goods, because of the sense that he was involved in a cover-up, secretly promoting a war in nicaragua that a lot of americans opposed. and just the deviousness of the whole thing raised the most serious possible questions about his integrity and fitness. >> if you can't answer your friends, what in heaven's name is going to happen next november if you are our standard-bearer and these democrats get after you on this subject? ( applause ) >> people want to get this iranian situation behind them. they're tired of it. they've got their children to think about. they've have their pocketbooks to think about. farmers have their crops to think about. >> he knew that, in all probability, his candidate had been up to his eyeballs in this... this activity. he'd get knocked out of the game pretty quick. there were a lot of very nervous moments. >> you said if you had known this was an arms-for-hostages swap... >> yes. >> ...that you would have opposed it. you also said... >> exactly. >> ... you did not know. >> may i answer that? >> that wasn't a question; it was a statement. >> it was a statement and i'll answer it. >> let me ask a question, if i may, first... >> the president created this program, as testified... >> it's very difficult to say, "that's a lie." you just can't do that, for a whole variety of reasons, when you are in a television interview and a great mass of people are watching. and they know this. they will just sit there and lie to you. >> this is what leads people to say, "either george bush was irrelevant or he was ineffective. he said himself he was out of the loop." now let me give you an example. you said ask a question. >> may i explain-- out of the loop. no operational role. go ahead. >> and this is another thing that lee had a particular mastery of-- staying on message. bush was out of the loop, he was out of the loop. there was never any evidence that he was in the loop. they couldn't break that story, so just don't say anything different. >> it's not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on iran. how would you like it if i judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in new york? would you like that? >> well, mr. president... >> i have respect for you, but i don't have respect for what you're doing here tonight. >> sources and other campaigns speculate bush's strategy may have been to set up rather, the vice-president always planning to go on the attack. cbs correspondent terrance smith asked bush campaign director lee atwater about that today. atwater laughed, and then answered, "we never talk about how we make sausage." >> atwater says he can't relax or take it easy, because he is always preparing for a mental sparring match. >> you are always in a battle of wits. there is always a bunch of guys out there trying to outsmart you and trying to stick it to you, and your job is to stick it to them first. >> the plan was pretty easy: win iowa and win new hampshire, and you won't have to worry about dole. >> under the pressure of a campaign and under the hot lights of the television, bob dole might be forced to make an error. lee had the campaign throw things at their campaign to press him. >> the bush campaign said this morning that senator dole broke the january 13 truce. the bush campaign says... >> come on, we're not going to answer. i'm not going to answer any more questions like this. we don't answer... >> lee put out so many different things that others were hearing voices everywhere, and he got them off their game by making them angry. he understood that the media beast could only be chewing on one ankle at a time. make sure the ankle was the other guy's. >> this kind of scurrilous, last minute, desperation tactics... and this is only the first state! >> did you, in fact, spread any false rumors about elizabeth dole? >> you know better than that. >> i don't know... >> no, i did not. no, i did not. >> bob dole says you did. >> no, i did not. bob dole and i... >> this always fascinated lee. he was in a profession-- your career could get dashed in a day, you know. that totally intrigued him. >> iowa has turned the republican race upside down. >> it's obvious that george bush is deeply damaged, and bob has to be considered the front- runner in new hampshire. >> when you ( no audio ) up in this arena, the spotlight is amplified a thousand times. washington cheers for two things-- the washington redskins to win on sunday, and it cheers for whoever is in power to fail. >> atwater vomited for several days after that. losing made him physically ill. if they lost new hampshire, they were done. they were looking into the abyss. i visited him in his hotel room-- he was nervous energy. it was snowing so hard outside that atwater's running in the stairwell of his hotel-- up and down, up and down. >> lee atwater will either solidify his image as the political wonder boy, or be known as the man who steered presidential front-runner george bush into the ground. reports surfaced that bush was prepared to fire atwater if he lost the new hampshire primary. >> sure, we are concerned. we're out there campaigning day and night, but in the end, george bush is going to win. >> the vice-president had to do something that he isn't naturally comfortable with. it's been called, wrongly, "negative." it wasn't negative-- this is play big or go home. >> bush says he won't raise taxes, period. dole straddles. he's been on both sides, and you know what that means. dole actually advised... >> read my lips-- no new taxes. >> dole could not take the "no tax increase" pledge. it killed him in new hampshire. bush was less ethical. bush took it-- he lied. ( laughs ) >> i would be remiss if i didn't say how well lee atwater, our great chairman, performed. he did a superb job, and it's not just because he's standing here. (( cheers and applause ) there is something wonderful about fighting back in life. >> what did you have to do to him to turn him into a hit man? >> he was not a hit man. what he did during that campaign was discuss issues. >> bush had won in new hampshire, and tom brokaw on nbc was interviewing the two of them. >> and senator dole, is there anything you'd like to say to the vice president? >> yeah, stop lying about my record. >> the look on his face and the tone of voice-- i interviewed him later about it and, you know, he said, "i lost my cool. it cost me. you work for two years of your life for something, and it's taken away from you. what are you supposed to say, 'gee, heck'?" >> we're not going to comment. i don't comment on atwater. >> the fact that the vice president got the nomination so overwhelmingly is... is very indicative of the kind of support he's got in this party. >> i am happy to welcome one half of that winning tandem, the honorable john bush-- george bush. ( laughter ) god! >> they thought bush was a wimp and a wuss; atwater was a hick and hack. >> with his big power boat in maine and his upper class background, being from yale-- do you think he is really the guy who is going to appeal to the blue-collar workers, the ordinary citizens of america? >> yeah, but you just named a bunch of things that have nothing to do with issues, and this is going to be a campaign of issues. >> people scoffed at the atwater issues. the american flag, the pledge of allegiance and prison furloughs. who would buy that? this is so irrelevant! >> ...and keep this country great. >> what about the deficit? >> the deficit? let me tell you what about it. i don't think you are paying too little in taxes; i think the government is spending too much. >> go home, bush! go home, bush! >> poor george! he can't help it... ( cheers ) ...he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. ( applause ) >> they're the party that talks tough on drugs but deals softly with drug-running dictators, and george bush is a dead duck. ( applause ) >> dukakis wins big everywhere. he's going to win in a landslide. i think he will win in every part of this country. >> the governor just came out here and said that "mr. dukakis is going to win big everywhere." >> i am glad they have that kind of attitude, because that leads to the kind of overconfidence and cockiness that's probably the most unhealthy attitude you can have in politics. >> who's going to be... >> bye! >> wait-- one more question. what about the vice presidency? when are we going to find out? >> that's a very interesting question. i will contemplate it when i go jogging. see ya, gang. >> lee's favorite statement was "just play dumb and keep moving." ( cheers ) >> the great state of texas proudly casts all its votes for her favorite son and the best father in america, george bush. >> republicans have often been dismissed as slow, dumb, and it's one of the fundamental reasons why republicans are successful. lee loved exaggerating that image and just outfoxing everybody around him. >> in the south, that's called "slow-playing" them. being a slow talker and easygoing-- well, a lot of northerners perceive that as not very bright. suck them in-- you end up running all over them. >> you can run. you can run. tell my big boy willie brown i am standing at the crossroads, baby, i think i'm sinking down. >> this is a crucial, crucial election. if we lose the presidency this time, we lose it all. >> it's very hard for... for any party to win three presidential elections in a row. this was really... should have been a democratic year. he tried to get me to write about governor dukakis having psychiatric problems. it was really a slander. he thought my weakness was that, if i could get an exclusive story, i would jump at it and bite at it, and not be as careful as i should be. well, that might be true, but i was careful enough not to get involved in that one. >> do you feel that michael dukakis should make his medical records public? do you think the american people deserve to know whether he's fit to govern? >> look, i'm not going to pick on an invalid. ( laughter ) >> mr. president. mr. president. >> he got away with those kinds of things because he did it in a sort of jocular way, with his irish wit. that statement was on the front page of every newspaper in america. immediately, michael dukakis's numbers started to drop. >> did you guys meet lee atwater, our campaign manager? >> hey, gang... pipe down. enough applause-- it goes to his head. >> no one hires people like lee atwater to lose. there are no silver or bronze medals in this game. and it's not about how you win-- it's about winning. i'm a former altar boy-- this is not a business that... that recruits altar boys. >> you do have to be tough to win the presidency-- i've been around a lot of them. and you do have to do things that the normal person might shrink from, but that's it... where is the line? wanting to win makes people do things that they wouldn't consider in a normal sense. they wouldn't hire lee atwater. to win, though, that's what it takes. >> earlier this week, republican senator steve symms of idaho said that he had been told of reports that kitty dukakis had burned an american flag during an anti-war demonstration in the '60s. >> i said it was an allegation that had been told to me. >> but from who, though? and something like that is very important nationally. who actually said it to you? i mean, at this point, somebody needs some kind of fact. >> i wouldn't want to disclose the sources. >> what about pictures? you mentioned pictures. have you seen any pictures? >> no, i have not. i said i hadn't seen them. i have been told by some very responsible people that there are pictures floating around. >> there couldn't be a photograph, because there was never any such incident. it is outrageous. it did not happen. and there is nobody who loves the flag as much as michael and myself. that flag is a symbol of freedom, a symbol of what this country is all about. >> were you at a demonstration at any time? >> never. >> when you are back on your heels and you are defending yourself constantly, it kind of looks like you are in the wrong and, therefore, lee's candidate usually comes out looking like he's in the right. >> and what does dukakis do? every time he stands up, he attacks george bush. he's a hypocrite. we all know that, and you know it, too. that is reflective of the kind of out-of-touch crowd that they are. they probably sat up in brookline, eating belgium endives and quiche out of the can and figure, "well, what we need to do is go..." >> quiche out of the can. ( laughter ) >> thank you. thank you! >> see, it works because there is a ring of truth to it. they probably think, you know, dukakis, they were a bunch of elitists... >> well, obviously, he and the folks around bush were trying to make me a kind of northeast liberal who was out of touch and that kind of a thing. i mean, the irony of this is, you know, i'm the guy who was the son of greek immigrants who came over here and lived the american dream. nothing against yankee brahmins who were here since 1630. >> a nice wasp kid, born in milton. >> texans want a texan for president. >> texans want a texan as president; not someone from massachusetts. >> born in massachusetts. we lived down in... grew up in connecticut. >> bush could eat pork rinds, but he was a yalie and he was an elite. and he may have lived in texas, but people still thought of him from connecticut. lee was the one who understood the country. >> don't let them tell you i'm no texan. take a look at that. ( cheers ) >> lee understood the power of image, and how american symbols resonate with a lot of southerners and a lot of people all over the country. and democrats, to this day, scratch their head and can't believe that people vote against their own interest by supporting these republicans, when in fact the audacity and arrogance of that is proud patriotism transcends money. >> mr. president! >> the question i really want to hear him answer is why in the world did he veto this bill calling for the pledge of allegiance to be said in our classrooms? can you imagine that? get down here, dukakis, and answer that question! >> kids salute the flag every day. it's part of the law; i'm all for it. the question was, could you put teachers in jail who refused to lead the pledge? supreme court of the united states said you can't do that. >> what's wrong with the pledge of allegiance? it just showing that you believe in and stand behind your country. i don't think there's nothing wrong with that. >> every one of us could stand some more patriotism. >> what i should have done is to make it very clear to mr. bush that i wasn't going to let him question my patriotism. >> i am not questioning his patriotism; i'm questioning his judgment. >> really extraordinarily strident, almost, in attacking mike dukakis. >> no, i don't think it's strident. i think... i think that's a mis- adjective. i would say... >> really? >> ...well, my is issue clarification. >> i don't like them taking my gun. >> well obviously, i wasn't taking people's guns away in texas. although, the president's son, now the president, ran around texas telling everyone that's what i was doing. >> if we didn't have any guns here, you know we might as well be a communist country. >> texas republicans didn't waste a minute-- five million letters told texas voters that michael dukakis was nothing but a northeast liberal. and that's a cuss word for a lot of texans. >> a liberal is somebody who wants more government, more taxes, more spending, more regulation and more interference in our lives, and the only thing they want less of is defense, and that's the one thing we want more of. >> if you let the campaign be about bush, you probably would have lost. the campaign had to be about the values you project onto dukakis. it was an early example of the culture war. >> the republican party has turned into a stealth party that argues on behalf of the common man and gives all of the benefits to the wealthiest one- tenth of 1%. it argues on behalf of certain morality policies, and engages in completely different private behavior. he used to describe those anti- abortion forces as the "extra- chromosome group" and the ones who had a hand coming out of their head or a third eye, you know? those were the people who were most devoted people to his cause! >> a little louder! bush! >> one thing lee told me, by the way, though, is never, ever, allow yourself to be photographed in a funny hat. ( laughs ) >> i was there; i know exactly what you're going to show. >> michael dukakis is opposed to virtually every defense system we developed. he opposed new aircraft carriers, he opposed anti... >> the tank ad went down his voting record. i remember thinking, "now, we've got to check every one of these points." i am not certain we did. >> atwater knew that the washington press corps is extremely cynical, shallow, superficial in many cases. doesn't want to discuss policy-- they're bored by it. what they care about is personalities and a kind of received narrative about how the election is going that they want to dictate. playing to the cheap seats would always work best. >> first of all, the bush campaign wouldn't have put those statistics on the air if they weren't correct, but again, that commercial is more about dukakis's record. >> i was a governor. if there were bills involving national security and defense in washington, obviously, i wouldn't have voted on those. i never served a day of my life in the congress of the united states. >> one reason marvin and i and brother jeb from the state of florida are working so hard is because our dad needs a real job. ( laughter ) >> now, president bush was learning a lot about politics. this was a new level of playing field, and he was watching a master in lee atwater. >> what george w. saw in lee was an attitude he might have been afraid to express the first time he ran for congress. he probably wasn't nearly manipulative and cold-blooded enough. he was probably trying to please his dad, who he somewhat mistakenly thought was a good guy, uncapable of tough politics. george w. was saying "now i see how this has to be done, do the deal, do the deed." >> sometimes, the sons can say something their fathers can't and that is, we're counting on you, because we want you to go out there and kick some of michael dukakis and kick it hard. thank you very much! ( cheers ) >> atwater had a genius for the sticky issue-- simple enough and scary enough that the media could latch on to it. >> as governor, michael dukakis vetoed mandatory sentences for drug dealers. he vetoed the death penalty. his revolving door prison policy gave weekend furloughs to first- degree murderers not eligible for parole. while out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape, and many are still at large. now, michael dukakis says he wants to do for america what he he's done for massachusetts. america can't afford that risk. >> i was angry. i was, like, very angry. because i saw through it right away. i saw the... the ad where they had these guys coming out of prison. the black guy was the only one who looked up at the camera. so, ah, these are diabolical minds behind this thing. >> that's the guy to be afraid of. this was calculated to emphasize the one african american here. >> race is a powder keg-- it... it deserves to be, in many ways. and lee got close to that powder keg and... and you know, setting off sparks nearby. >> this was a piece of literature that was being distributed in a number of states. "all the murderers and rapists and drug pushers and child molesters in massachusetts vote for michael dukakis." i thought it was despicable. >> then they had the rape victim-- this woman-- go on tour and talk about, in explicit details, what happened during the rape. she was raped twice... >> there was a so-called independent committee ad where they simply used horton's face. >> one was willie horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. despite a life sentence, horton received ten weekend passes from prison. horton fled, kidnapped a young couple-- stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. >> the candidate and the people around him deny any responsibility. anybody who believes that believes in the tooth fairy. >> i just wonder whether there isn't a tinge of racism. >> absolutely not. absolutely not. i don't even think many people in the south know what race willie horton is. i think that's totally irrelevant. >> i don't believe that. i think he was used primarily because he was black. like lee said before he died, "you don't call them ( no audio ) anymore like you did 30 years ago," you know, "you got to be more subtle than that." wasn't very subtle at all to me. >> everybody saw how provocative it was, and so it got a tremendous amount of free airtime. who knows how many times "hooked up to jumper cables" got repeated in south carolina, and who knows how many times willie horton's scowling, angry face of a killer was televised, absolutely for free. >> there is a story about a fellow named willie horton. >> willie horton. >> convicted murderer. >> murderer. >> convicted murderer, willie horton. >> willie horton. >> weekend vacation. >> weekend passes. >> the cold blooded... >> convicted murderer. >> first degree... >> convicted murderer. >> killer, murderer. >> they rape people. >> raped his wife. >> they maul people. >> willie horton will become a household name. >> no more furloughs for people that rape, pillage and plunder. ( cheers ) thank you and god bless. >> do you think the willie horton commercial, though, gives hints of... of racial politics? >> i haven't seen the willie horton commercial. >> you don't have a willie horton commercial on the air? >> no. >> furlough program commercial? you don't have a crime... you don't have an ad on the air about the crime issue? >> no, no. >> so there is no plan in this campaign at all to use... to use the willie horton commercial at all to appeal... >> well, there is no willie horton commercial. i do think that the criminal furlough program that dukakis supported in which convicted murderers were allowed to go on weekend furlough... >> i went into the headquarters to see atwater, at his request. he locked the office door, and he popped the famous willie horton spot onto a television. he said, "i got a couple boys who are going to put up a couple million dollars up for this independent." and i said, "that's a huge mistake. you and george bush will wear that to your grave. it's a racist ad. you're already winning this issue; it's working for you. you're stepping over a line, you're going to regret it." and he said, "y'all a ( no audio )." >> i was amazed that the dukakis camp never seemed to find it in them to forcefully explain that that program in massachusetts was copied after a popular state, whose governor was the first governor to sign a law for weekend prisoner release. that governor's name... was out and murdered people, and he defended the program. but i never said that.drf ekdn i mean, that was the... that was the decision i made. crazy in retrospect-- crazy. >> if you don't defend yourself, and they are doing negative ads against you and you just say "oh, i don't want to play that game. i'm going to be positive," you are going to get destroyed. >> race is poison, but it's poison that works for their side. people vote their fears and not their hopes, and lee understood that. >> it was bizarre that the willie horton case became the focus of the election. >> george bush, the republican nominee, and michael dukakis, the democratic nominee. >> the press learned to speak the republican talking points without even getting them through the fax machine. >> the first question goes to governor dukakis-- if kitty dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer? >> no, i don't, bernard, and i think you know that i've opposed the death penalty all my life... >> the question was so personal, it was totally out of order, and i thought that bernard shaw contributed to dukakis losing that election. >> w. learned that the only thing that really matters is who wins. whatever really happened doesn't matter. they create their own reality, as people in this bush white house later said. >> he was the first guy i ever heard who said that. it's now kind of rote in politics, but lee was saying early-- "perception is reality." lee was ahead of the pack. >> republicans tend to be people who don't believe in anything, that just want to win elections. democrats, i think, have really sincere beliefs. ( laughing ) i think they're all wrong, most of them, but they're sincere. ( music playing ) ( applause ) >> runs one of the most racist campaigns in history, marketing the wedge between whites and blacks. yet he admired african american culture. he got up there in blackface. >> he was the head of the klan-- i mean, this is the way people felt about lee atwater. but he truly loved me as a man and as a brother, and he treated everybody else the same way. he loved everybody because he loved the music that we were doing. >> lee didn't have a racist bone in his body. never heard him say the "n" word. when it came to music and his dancing-- you can ask anyone that ever saw him dance or whatever-- lee was a black person in a white body. >> that inaugural party was the culmination of lee atwater's life. he was the center of attention. he was the star. all the history, all the yearnings all came together on that night. he was dancing as fast as he could, and i didn't know exactly what lay ahead for him. >> one network called you the architect of the evil campaign. you are proud this morning of the achievement. are you as proud of the tactics? >> if the american people truly thought he was running a negative campaign, they would have reacted negatively. >> well, i don't know, lee. in fairness, i'm not sure that's true. i mean, in poll after poll, they did say they didn't like the negative campaign, saying maybe the lowest turnout in 64 years, and faulting people like you. >> was it you who told george bush, "you've got to raise fear of black men?" >> we didn't do that. >> he destroyed michael dukakis. they love that. they destroyed the democrat. they all sit around and, you know, toast themselves at their happy hours that they took a man down. >> upsetting, i was angry-- a whole bunch of emotional feelings. they were falsehoods. the untruth of all that was very disheartening. >> it he can't stand the heat, he ought to get out of the kitchen! the whole concept of going negative, how much negative campaigning is troubling. but there is a time here when sound political judgment says this kind of negative stuff might work. did we ever do it? yeah. did we feel comfortable about it? no. >> george herbert walker bush has to take the responsibility for his campaign, and he's not a dummy. you couldn't be around lee atwater without knowing how he did it. >> but you know what? you never saw george bush ever asked him to stop. what did they do? they made him chairman of the republican national committee. >> lee atwater looks to become one of the most powerful party chairmen in modern times. >> president told me, sitting in his office, "there is one job that i think you would be good at. it's a job i used to have." so i'm thinking, 'wow, c.i.a.!'" ( laughter ) and, by the way, i wouldn't have been bad there. ( laughter ) >> you did not name political operatives as chairman of the republican national committee. you just didn't do it. >> is it your intention to try to... try to reshape the party in your image, to your tactics? >> well, actually, i'm really a lovable guy and i just haven't gotten an opportunity... >> i wasn't speaking about you, personally-- i'm talking about your style. >> but, actually, my political style is lovable. >> when atwater became the rnc chairman, this political party was turned over to dirty tricks-- the new spirit of kind of ruthless, win-at-any-cost republicanism. >> he rose to a position that many of us couldn't have imagined him holding. >> people would just come running up-- i mean, it was like being with a movie star... lee calls me-- "come on over to my office. james brown's here." my lord-- royalty! >> ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to, on guitar, the national chairman of the republican party, mr. lee atwater! ( cheers and applause ) the man that brought the blues to the white house, ladies and gentlemen. >> just take a shot of the band; find the republican. ( laughter ) ( cheers ) >> the fame became kind of all- consuming. he was on an increasingly intense search for the buzz of fame, the hype. lee got all these things. i felt like he took some satisfaction from it, but not enough to be happy. >> listen, lee-- along with willie dixon and john lee hooker, you're one of my musical idols. ( laughter ) >> atwater had perceived-- long before anyone else in american politics did-- that the biggest threat to bush was a guy from arkansas named bill clinton. and what he did was bring two important operatives from arkansas, j.j. vigneault and rex nelson, to the rnc headquarters. clinton was getting ready to run for another term as governor, and atwater wanted to put up a candidate named tommy robinson, kind of a swaggering demagogic figure. the idea was to... to dirty up clinton, to do enough damage to him with rumors about women and drugs that he would simply be too damaged to run for president. >> lee recognized the threat of bill clinton and the quality of the candidate, and tried to take him out of the game as early as possible. he was not successful doing it. >> atwater started transforming politics into a series of tabloid moments in a way that was incredibly powerful for the republicans. >> i'd watched politics fought like war under lee atwater. i think it's had some bad effects on the country. he'd had to struggle to get everything he had gotten in his life. he wasn't going to stop. >> i haven't changed a bit. i am the same guy i was the day i walked into politics; i'll be the same guy i am the day i walk out of it. i am proud of who i am and what i am, and i don't disavow anything i've ever done. >> there was actually an incident where lee went to howard university, because he got on the board and he told them all the great things he was going to do for them, like organize a blues concert for them. and they didn't have any interest at all. first of all, they listened to hip-hop. second of all, they were taking him seriously in terms of the political. his purpose was to try to fool black people into thinking they had a place in the republican party. ( shouting ) >> ♪ lee gotta go lee gotta go ♪ get out, lee! >> the students say they won't end their protest until atwater is removed from the board of trustees. >> we know that willie horton ad had america thinking that black men are rapists and murderers... >> ♪ atwater snuck in behind our backs ♪ we ain't going to take no stuff like that... ♪ >> if the howard group had given him a chance, they would have loved him. ( booing ) he got booted out. that hurt lee. >> lee would collapse, occasionally. the guy would be so exhausted. when you're at the top of the hill-- well, all arrows get fired up, right? and people were gunning for him. >> republican national committee chairman lee atwater was rushed to a washington hospital yesterday after fainting during a political speech. doctors found a small brain tumor. sources tell nbc news that atwater will undergo radiation treatment. >> i am very pleased to get back to my wife, sally-- she's going to have a baby next month-- and my two little girls. i've missed them tremendously, and... but an experience like this... really does a lot for you. >> what do the doctors say about it? >> i probably can be done away with it after six weeks of radiation treatment. see you, gang. >> what does your shirt say, lee? >> "just say moe." ( laughter ) one of my intellectual heroes. ( laughter ) see you gang. thank you so much. >> hard to describe the pain-- two little ones and one on the way... >> we had a three- or four-year period at odds. i'm on the second floor, he's on the fourth floor in the same building. so, mary calls down to me and i go racing up, and he holds my hand and he's just... he's shaking, he's just... he's having a seizure. and so, i ride with him to the hospital, and on the way over there, he just said, "you're the only one i can trust. you've got to take care of me." he said, "they're going try and finish me off. please, please, take care of me." all the hatred just sort of goes out, and i said, "lee, i promise you, i'll take care of you." >> he fought it, and he would come to work when he shouldn't have, and he was physically debilitated... >> hey, ben. >> morning, lee. >> how are you? >> they were trying to figure out how they could get him out as the national chairman. no one cared about him anymore. it had to be extremely painful for him. everything that matters in washington is power, and when that power is gone, it's gone. >> they found a tumor, and they literally drilled a hole and dropped radiation to burn the tumor out. there was a lead wall, and he was literally radioactive. >> the steroids just blew his face-- looked like the man in the moon. he was really embarrassed. he really did not want us to see him. very hard, to... to see somebody that strong be that weak. >> "i recalled sun-tzu's maxim-- 'get inside the head of your enemy.' we'd used that to such effect on bob dole in 1988. now, cancer had used it on me." horribly alone, in that lead- lined room, radiation pellets in his head. he couldn't spin his way out of that. a guy who had been so unwilling to really believe in anything other than power began a frantic search for spiritual meaning. >> you would be waiting in the hall. there would be rabbis, witch- doctors, buddhists, shamans, these radical catholic priests. he told all of them he was on board. his theory was, "if one of these is the true path, i'll be on it." >> lee was confronting some very troubling facts-- that in winning, he had hurt people. fear had been part of his toolkit. that fear came back on him. what was next for him in the afterlife? >> he was scared to death. he described it as sheer terror. >> while lee was growing uglier on the outside, there was a remarkable change inside of him. >> he said, "chuck, i had never read a bible in my life. and the first thing i wanted was a bible." he told me that. wow. >> he came back to south carolina for one visit. >> ♪ well, i'm a bad boy i'm as bad as i can be... ♪ >> people just couldn't believe it. "that's lee?" >> i had money, i had power, i had fame and i had fortune. guess what? it meant nothing. it was all... it was all a waste. and in one day, i learned what counts-- that's you all, human relationships... ♪ people, i once was strong hard and lean ♪ and i'm just trying to see how i could be so mean... ♪ >> here is the letter i received from lee atwater. he says, "my illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that i never understood and probably never had." and i have every reason to believe that lee atwater was telling the truth when he said, "what i've done was wrong. it was bad, and bad for the country." since then, i have written articles about it in hoping that others who want to be like him in politics would realize that lee finally said, "we don't want to do this anymore." i'm sure he did change when he died, and that's a good thing. >> what really disgusted me about lee's "deathbed" pronouncements was that he was purposefully misportrayed. it wasn't about "i want to go to heaven," or some confessional or something like that. democrats want to leave him-- the legacy of atwater-- be that he was some dirty trickster. he was not a dirty trickster; he was a brilliant strategist. >> if anybody says this man did not apologize, they lied. i was there when he was on his deathbed. i was there. he told me, "i have sent out telegrams to everybody that i might have hurt, even to willie horton." >> they had to kill the messenger, because they couldn't kill the message. they had to turn him into a boogie man-- satan incarnate. lee atwater made himself a figure of demonology to psych out his opponents and to anesthetize people to his tactics. and the sad part-- some people would say the justified part-- was that the role he made for himself ended up literally imprisoning him. >> ♪ sounds like i can hear this... ♪ >> he always had a driver, and we would just get in the car and ride. >> ♪ death bells ringing all in my ear... ♪ >> "in 1988, 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." >> ♪ death bells ringing all in my ear... ♪ >> there was one verse in the bible that stuck with lee: "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?" and that stuck in his craw. >> ♪ what kind of chariot gonna take me away from you... ♪ >> died on good friday. he was buried on april fool's day, but it was easter sunday-- in his jogging suit. there's lee right there, seeking redemption, and yet he goes out thumbing his nose. >> he was a king-maker. >> he referred to himself as machiavellian, and he was, in the very best sense of that term. >> this little guy from south carolina was being treated like a head of state. i cried and i cried like a baby; the emotion just poured out of me. the tragedy is not the legacy of the greatness, it's the legacy of sort of one of the evildoers of american politics. he wasn't that-- he was an insecure kid who got to play in the big leagues and got to the top of the mountain. he showed them. he definitely showed them. >> some people say that he did find spiritual peace. i hope so. but i'm not convinced, because his cynicism-- his skepticism-- was always at war with his desire to believe. >> he was telling the story about how the living bible was what was giving him faith, and i said to mary, "i really, sincerely hope that he found peace." she said, "ed, when we were cleaning up his things afterwards, the bible was still wrapped in the cellophane. never been taken out of the package." which just sort of told you everything there was-- he was spinning right to the end. >> i, william jefferson clinton, do solemnly swear... >> if lee was alive, bill clinton would've never gotten elected. that was really sad to see. >> when you have a talent as deep as atwater's and rove's, you lose, but you don't lose, because losing a battle is not losing the war, and they don't go away. >> ... preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. >> ... so help me god. >> ... so help me god. >> congratulations. ( cheers ) >> to me, the lee atwater story is a great story because of its human dimension, not because of politics. it's a story of american yearning and striving-- to be accepted, to be powerful, to be great, and the personal risks of doing that. life gets even with you in the end. >> this report continues on our web site, where you can watch excerpts from the film again online; explore more about atwater's life and legacy... >> if you're on the other team, well, i'm going to try to beat you. >> read our interview with producer stefan forbes about what it was like to make this documentary and what he learned. and then join the discussion at pbs.org. >> narrator: next time on frontline: he calls castro a god... >> how are you, fidel? >> narrator: ...and george bush a devil. >> he's convinced george bush goes to bed thinking of ways to assassinate hugo chavez. >> narrator: to his followers, he is venezuela's hope... >> chavez! chavez! >> to his critics, he is at worst a dictator, and at best a master of the media. >> he sings, he can be funny. he obeys none of the rules for a public official on television. >> "the hugo chavez show." watch frontline. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. with major funding from the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. helping to build a more just world. and additional funding from the park foundation. with additional funding for this program from the nathan cummings foundation; the independent television service, with funding from the corporation for public broadcasting; and by the lef foundation, and the paul robeson fund for independent media. >> this is pbs. >> baby boomers will be facing a very different retirement than their parents. >> narrator: you've saved, you've invested, you've dreamed of retiring. but can you afford to retire? watch frontline. 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