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Was Gary Hart Set Up?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/was-gary-hart-set-up/570802/What are we to make of the deathbed confession of the political operative Lee Atwater, newly revealed, that he staged the events that brought down the Democratic candidate in 1987?
In the spring of 1990, after he had helped the first George Bush reach the presidency, the political consultant Lee Atwater learned that he was dying. Atwater, who had just turned 39 and was the head of the Republican National Committee, had suffered a seizure while at a political fund-raising breakfast and had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. In a year he was dead.
Atwater put some of that year to use making amends. Throughout his meteoric political rise he had been known for both his effectiveness and his brutality. In South Carolina, where he grew up, he helped defeat a congressional candidate who had openly discussed his teenage struggles with depression by telling reporters that the man had once been “hooked up to jumper cables.” As the campaign manager for then–Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1988, when he defeated Michael Dukakis in the general election, Atwater leveraged the issue of race—a specialty for him—by means of the infamous “Willie Horton” TV ad. The explicit message of the commercial was that, as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had been soft on crime by offering furloughs to convicted murderers; Horton ran away while on furlough and then committed new felonies, including rape. The implicit message was the menace posed by hulking, scowling black men—like the Willie Horton who was shown in the commercial.
In the last year of his life, Atwater publicly apologized for tactics like these. He told Tom Turnipseed, the object of his “jumper cables” attack, that he viewed the episode as “one of the low points” of his career. He apologized to Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of the Willie Horton ad.
And in a private act of repentance that has remained private for nearly three decades, he told Raymond Strother that he was sorry for how he had torpedoed Gary Hart’s chances of becoming president.
According to the article, the entire 'affair' that caused Gary Hart to withdraw from the Presidential race and, basically, allowed George H. W. Bush to win the election, was a hit job on Hart who, in reality, wasn't having any sort of affair. Think about how different if a Democrat had won the 1987 election and become the 41st President instead of Bush.
It a long article but an interesting read for those of us old enough to remember the Hart fiasco and doesn't appear to be behind a paywall.
Article was discussed on Rachael Maddow this evening as well 10/17, so if you don't want to read the entire article go find the show and listen to her explain it all. She has the author of the article on the show with her.
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