The Stranger

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story is a wonderful, cold-eyed look at what created the amoral GOP strategist. It turns out, both depressingly and satisfyingly, that Atwater's evolution is an old story. At a young age, his younger brother was burned to death before his eyes by a pot of boiling cooking oil that fell off his mother's kitchen counter. Why believe in a just world after that? Atwater didn't, and on top of that he had a chip on his shoulder about the condescension white Southerners like himself suffered from Northern elites. Naturally, he went on to perfect the art of doing everything that just, decent, moral people won't do to get elected--and doing it, most famously, to that quintessential Northern elite, Dukakis. Then, as he was dying of a brain tumor in his 40s, his face puffed up by steroids, his enemies circling, Atwater came to regret it all. He had grabbed power, but in the process he had given away his soul. By that time, though, it was too late--for him, and for the country. By Eli Sanders

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