Part Two: Lee Atwater: The Political Dirty Tricks Artist Who Gave us President(s) George Bush

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part Two – Lee Atwater: The Political Dirty Tricks Artist Who Gave Us President(s) George Bush

Date: August 27, 2025
Host: Robert Evans
Guest: Garrison Davis
Podcast: Cool Zone Media / Behind the Bastards

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the deep dive into the life and impact of Lee Atwater, the infamous Republican strategist whose mastery of underhanded tactics changed American politics—culminating with the election of George H.W. Bush and influencing the next generation of political operatives. Evans and Davis dissect Atwater's formative years and early career, highlighting his manipulative genius, the origins of "push polling," and his role as an architect of the modern conservative playbook—especially the racially charged Southern Strategy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Atwater's Early Dirty Tricks & Psychology (05:06–11:39)

• High School Schemes:
  Atwater’s penchant for manipulation surfaces early. He orchestrates a fake school election, publishes a zine with fabricated “comedy ratings,” and even creates a “Dial-a-Slut” fake ad to hurt classmates.

  “He’s a prodigy in the evil arts of politics.” — Robert Evans (08:09)

• Understanding Influence:
  Atwater learns people will do almost anything to see their names in print or be considered ‘Number 1’—a lesson he carries into his political career.

  “Nothing taught me more cleanly and clearly that people like to see their names in the paper and people like to be number one at something. I always remembered that lesson.” — Lee Atwater, as quoted by Evans (08:24)

• Staying in the Shadows:
  Atwater prefers to orchestrate from behind the scenes, deliberately keeping himself out of the spotlight for maximum effect.

2. Race, Music, and Hypocrisy (09:18–11:06)

• Selective Sensitivity:
  In high school, Atwater uses his influence to prevent racist behavior—when it suits his musical tastes. He’s notably anti-racist when it benefits him, highlighting a lifelong habit of using racial issues instrumentally but denying personal racism.

  “He doesn’t want to be seen as racist, but he wants to be allowed to campaign as one.” — Evans (10:26)

3. Fraternity Antics & Academic Laziness (11:39–18:22)

• Fraternity Life:
  Atwater’s high school and college years are filled with excessive frat partying, cruel hazing, and questionable alcohol concoctions (“Purple Jesus” made from abandoned roadside liquor and mystery juice).

• Skating Through Academics:
  Atwater nearly fails out of school, saved only by his ability to charm authority figures face-to-face.

  “The only way to get him to actually work hard is to trigger his oppositional defiant disorder. That’s the entirety of how this guy works.” — Robert Evans (17:59)

4. Launching into Politics: Strom Thurmond & the College Republicans (27:31–36:08)

• Mentorship with Strom Thurmond
  Through family connections, Atwater interns with notorious segregationist Strom Thurmond, gaining political direction and learning the ins and outs of conservative politics.

• Opportunism over Ideology:
  Atwater is described as politically agnostic; his loyalty is to his own advancement and the game of politics, not to conservative ideology.

  “He didn’t believe in conservatism. He could have worked for either party and been just as happy. But he saw there was more of a place for him in the Republican Party.” — Evans (31:50)

• College Republican Machine:
  Atwater’s talent for mobilization is evident as he signs up 12,000 new Republican voters at college, an unprecedented feat that brings him to national attention and cements his role as the ultimate competitive operative.

5. The Southern Strategy Explained (36:08–44:09, 58:10–62:32)

• Brief History Lesson:
  Evans outlines the Democratic-to-Republican shift in the South, focusing on how the Southern Strategy used coded language (“states’ rights,” “busing,” “tax cuts”) to appeal to white voters’ racial anxieties.

• Atwater’s Own Words (60:03–61:44):
  The most infamous moment of the episode: Atwater candidly admits the insidious logic behind the Southern Strategy in a now-audio-confirmed interview:

  “You start out in 1954 by saying ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’… So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff… you’re talking about cutting taxes… [and] the byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites… if it is getting that abstract and that coded, that we’re doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me?” — Lee Atwater (61:03–61:44 audio clip)

• Rationalizing Racism:
  Atwater attempts to justify that abstraction (dog-whistle politics) somehow represents progress, though Evans and Davis remain deeply skeptical of this “less racist than before” framing.

6. Dirty Tricks Go National (44:12–54:09 / 50:18–58:10)

• Weaponizing Rumors & Push Polls:
  Atwater’s hallmark becomes sophisticated “dirty tricks”:

  • Planting damaging fake news in obscure papers, then amplifying those stories in attack ads.
  • Using third-party (spoiler) candidates to introduce antisemitic attacks discreetly—against Holocaust survivor Max Heller (44:43).
  • Push-polling tactics to stigmatize opponents on race, mental health, or other vulnerabilities—most famously against Tom Turnipseed:

    “I’m not going to respond to allegations made by someone who’s been hooked up to jumper cables.” — Atwater, referencing Turnipseed’s childhood electroshock therapy (53:34)

  • Admits to targeting the press themselves, who only learn afterward they have been manipulated:

    “Lee laughed and said, ‘Bandy, you got used.’ So he celebrates this. He likes being like—he wants you to know when he’s done this; for one, that he’s proud of it.” — Evans quoting New York Times journalist Lee Bandy (54:55)

• Architect of Republican Realignment:
  Atwater serves as Southern regional coordinator for Reagan’s 1980 campaign, steering Reagan to kick off in Philadelphia, Mississippi—a location loaded with racial significance—to send “coded” signals to southern white voters.

• Dog Whistle Politics Fully Deployed:
  Atwater refines dog-whistle tactics, advocating for issues like tax cuts under the guise of economics, while realigning Republican messaging to appeal to racially anxious white voters.

7. Lee Atwater’s Lasting Impact (Throughout)

• Atwater sets the template for all future GOP dirty tricks and the modern, performative, shameless style of attack politics. His influence reaches through the Bush dynasty and propagates to successors like Karl Rove and Roger Stone.
• Despite claiming that his generation will transcend racism, Atwater’s own career demonstrates how abstraction and coded language can be weaponized to sustain power and perpetuate inequality.

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Notable Quotes

• On Media Manipulation:
  “By not being involved, I could have a lot more fun with it. I learned back then that I was just going to cool it and stay out of the scene.” — Lee Atwater (08:00 approx)
• On Justifying Dirty Tricks:
  “He just starts challenging individual votes, and he just keeps coming up with... they’re bullshit challenges...” — Robert Evans, on Atwater's tactics (40:13)
• On Adapting Racism:
  “And you’re getting so abstract now... all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things. And the byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” — Lee Atwater (61:10)
• On Political Amoralism:
  “He was not ideologically... He could have worked for either party and been just as happy.” — Evans (31:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Fake School Election & Early Trickery: 05:06–09:05
• Racial Politics in Adolescence: 09:18–11:39
• Alcohol, Fraternities & Skating Academics: 11:39–18:22
• Meeting Strom Thurmond, Start in GOP Politics: 27:31–36:08
• The Southern Strategy Explained: 36:08–44:09; 58:10–62:32
• Push Polls, Planting Attacks & Smearing Opponents: 50:18–54:55
• Atwater’s Southern Strategy Audio Clip: 61:03–61:44

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Tone and Closing Remarks

The hosts’ tone is irreverent, darkly humorous, and deeply critical of Atwater’s legacy. Throughout, they underscore the grim effectiveness of Atwater’s tactics while openly wishing such political competence had gone in service of moral causes.

“He’s the Republican Party distilled into one man. It’s just pure oppositional defiance.” — Robert Evans (18:22)

The episode closes on a note of dark resignation:

“The Lee Atwater strategy: Hurt as many people as you want, as long as you’re doing something, anything to quiet the sound of your brother screaming as he boils alive in oil.” — Robert Evans (64:01)

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Summary for New Listeners

If you want to understand how American politics became so brazenly cutthroat and racially coded—and why “dog whistle” tactics remain central to the GOP—Behind the Bastards’ Lee Atwater series is essential. Through tales of adolescent cruelty, collegiate chaos, and weaponized strategy, Evans and Davis illustrate how one man’s hunger to win at any cost recreated the rules of modern political warfare.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Call Zone Media.

Schumer. I hardly know her. No. Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast that just started the worst way a podcast can start, I think we can all agree.

I didn't like that. It was unenjoyable.

It's compulsive. Like Lee Atwater. I can't control him, you know, so you can't be angry at me for it. You know, just like we can't be angry at Lee Atwater for all the people he hurt. That's the way it works. Anyway. I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the Bastards, part two of our series on Republican strategist Lee Atwater, the guy who invented modern presidential elections. My guest today, as with the last episode, Garrison D, A V, I S. That's so that if there are any two year olds in the audience, they can't spell your last name. Garrison. They don't know what I'm saying.

[Garrison Davis]

I was gonna do this whole episode as another extremely successful political operator, Chuck Schumer, but then I realized I don't know what Chuck Schumer sounds like. So now I'm just stuck with these glasses falling off my nose.

[Robert Evans]

I think it's something like hoodlee doodly doo.

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I'm Chuck Schumer.

[Robert Evans]

That's basically it, right?

[Garrison Davis]

I do not think that is how he sounds.

[Robert Evans]

I think that's pretty close.

[Garrison Davis]

I've certainly heard him speak before, but.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I think it sounds like that.

You know, it's however you imagine. Like if somebody was made of stone trying to speak.

Yes, like that's exactly what I did. You're right. Sophie, thank you for the praise. I appreciate it. I live off of it.

[Garrison Davis]

We'll return to this topic later, I guess.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, sure. This is an Iheart podcast.

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[Robert Evans]

Now last episode we closed out with our friend Lee Atwater. Your friend, friend of the pot. Lee Atwater has just done a fucking fake school election for his friend who, depending on the source, some say his buddy didn't even know that he was, like, putting him up for election until, like this magazine comes out where he's like, rating he, like, mimeographs, this fucking zine basically being like, he won this. Com. He's the funniest kid in school. Based on, you know, this. It's unclear, like, how this ranking was done. And, you know, promising free beer on tap. He's got his little fucking student SS out kidding, kicking people, right? And the first part of this, the fact that he starts it with like this fake poll, basically that he's handing results to people, is noteworthy. Cause fake polls are going to be key to Lee Atwater's adult political style. Now, today we call a fake poll conducted by an independent pollster funded by a campaign or a dark money operation not legally connected to a campaign for the purpose of pushing a political agenda, a push poll. And what Lee's done here isn't quite a push poll yet, because the goal of a push poll is to propagandize a voter under the guise of polling them. So you call them and say, hey, we're doing a poll. If you were to find out that Candidate X was a pedophile, would you still vote for them?

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And you're not accusing them of being a pedophile, but also it makes people think about them that way.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And it's usually you can get a little more direct than that, but that's the basic idea, right, is it's a poll where you don't actually care about the result. What matters is you're trying to subtly propagandize to people when their defenses aren't up because they don't think they're being subjected to a political ad.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And it's not exactly what he does in high school with his friend because again, he just releases the poll. But this is gonna work so well that it kind of gets him. He's always a guy who's going to do a lot of what he does through different kinds of bullshit polls. And part of the reason why is that after this election happens, he notices that, like, kids that he didn't even know keep coming up to him and telling him jokes or, like, cutting up in class and then looking at him to gauge his reaction. One kid even wore a plastic display bottle of soap for an entire day. And they're trying to they want Lee to see them because they realize that he is the guy publishing this list of the funniest kids in school, and they want to get on the list. They don't realize that it's a completely bullshit list.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Lee writes, quote, it took me about an hour to realize they all wanted to get into the comedy ratings. So he keeps publishing the flyer and he expands it. He adds a Bad Breath of the Week award, and he adds fake ads for a Dial a Slut service, which he claims is run by one of his female classmates. So as a kid, he's learned how to use the media to manipulate his classmates, to hurt people, to help a campaign. He's already figured this out, and he's, like, not yet 18 or just about turning 18.

Dial a slut service.

He's a prodigy in the evil arts of politics. Yeah, sir. He would later recall, nothing taught me more cleanly and clearly that people like to see their names in the paper and people like to be number one at something. I always remembered that lesson.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, he also has discovered the inherent charm of the DIY magazine, which it's addictive, which everyone, usually around 18, falls victim to.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Of course. Everyone. Yes, absolutely.

[Garrison Davis]

Garrison kids love DIY magazines.

[Robert Evans]

Some kids do. Yeah. Yeah. The cool kids and the Lee Atwaters. It's a real mixed bag. If you're mimeographing, you're gonna go one of two ways. Lee himself was never featured in the paper that he put out. He wrote, by not being involved, I could have a lot more fun with it. I learned back then that I was just going to cool it and stay out of the scene. So he's also figured out, I don't want to be in politics. I don't want the spotlight on me.

[Garrison Davis]

He wants to be behind it, but.

[Robert Evans]

I want to be focused. Yeah. I want to be behind the spotlight.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Focusing it on people.

[Garrison Davis]

He's like the Lorne Michael.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he's like a less evil Lorne Michael.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

That's right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So the one area where Lee was weirdly positive and weirdly ahead of his time was when it came to black musicians. When black bands would play at his all white school, he would use all of his manipulative prowess. Sure. That his peers weren't shitty towards them. His friend Debbie Carlson recalled, he showed sensitivity toward blacks that he didn't always show to his good friends. And, yeah, I think it's worth noting. This is black musicians.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That he likes. It's not like a general behavior trait, but he is noted by his white classmates as like, he was like the non racist one.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Or at least the one who was most aggressively anti racist when there was something he wanted to get out of it. I think that is like an important thing to add, that this is not just happening in a vacuum. He's not like, seeing someone be racist and confronting them outside of this. It's specifically because I like this band. They're gonna be playing at our school and I don't want them to get embarrassed.

[Garrison Davis]

Hmm.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

No, it does seem to be like.

[Robert Evans]

It is interesting. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

One of the few things that keeps him from being like, the most evil that he could be is his love of music and how that alters his perception of racial politics slightly.

[Robert Evans]

I guess what's interesting is it alters his perception of racial politics, but his politics are always very racial and he gets really angry. The one thing that seems to bother him is when people call him out for being racist, for the racist things he does, because some of his best friends genuinely are black musicians. And he doesn't want to be seen as racist, but he wants to be allowed to campaign as one. And that's really it. The fact that he does seem legitimately offended when people accuse him of being racist while consciously using racism, racial politics in a way that is undeniably conscious is really interesting to me. But we'll see more of that later.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I would like to hear about that in the context in which it.

[Robert Evans]

Exists in it's succumbing. So he'd gotten his parents to agree to let him go back to public school by laying out an ambitious plan for his future. He'd written them, I think I would like to be a lawyer and maybe someday go into politics. He told them he intended to apply after graduating to the University of South Carolina, the Citadel, North Carolina State, and Wofford University. And that last one he didn't really want to go to, but it was his dad's alma mater, and so he adds it again. It's part of this, like, manipulation campaign.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He just can't turn that off. As I noted in the last episode, as soon as he's out of military school, he gets back to his old tricks. And in fact, he is more out of control than ever.

His high school really dial a slut.

Service that's not even like. His high school has an unofficial fraternity system and he joins a fraternity who call themselves the Dark Horsemen. And I think you can tell what these kids, these dudes are like from that.

[Garrison Davis]

No, no, no. I want to hear more about this?

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

The Dark Horseman. The Dark Horseman. Horseman.

I'm covering my drink even though he's dead.

Yeah. Oh, you want to cover your drink? When they're mentioned, it's like fucking.

[Garrison Davis]

If you say it three times into a zoom call, they appear behind you, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah. They'll fucking roofie you. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. They viciously haze their members. When Lee is admitted, he has to rub Icy Hot on his balls and then be paddled for hours. He has to get into, like an hours long slap fight with a friend where they're like, really hurting each other and, like, he apologizes afterwards. They both do, but, like, they're willing to do it to get into this club. And it's. This is going to be. This is not uncommon for fraternities back then. Although the fact that it's a high school fraternity is kind of weird and an example of, like, who Lee is. So they would pool all of their money to rent dance halls or warehouses and throw these massive parties for their high school. And when they couldn't afford liquor, Lee has a great idea for how they get booze, which is there's this stretch of road outside of town that's like the dating spot where, like, people will pull over to make out slash fuck with their girlfriends.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And, you know, periodically the cops will come by and so you'll like, toss your liquor out of your car to, like, get away so they don't realize that you're, like, drunk and trying to have sex in a car. So he has his friends, they all go out to this spot and they start searching in like, the brush around the makeout point, and they pull out all these half full bottles of like, beer and liquor and they mix it together in a barrel and then they fill the barrel the rest of the way with what is only described in my sources as purple juice.

[Garrison Davis]

This sounds. This sounds rancid.

[Robert Evans]

It sounds awful. The resulting beverage is called Purple Jesus. And it did a spectacular job of giving teenagers alcohol poisoning. It just sounds like hell.

Boy, howdy, that's awful.

Oh, my God. You love to see it. I mean, I didn't. I'm not gonna pretend I did much better. Yeah. Cause we would just.

[Garrison Davis]

I do feel very alien to this sort of stuff. Like, I enjoy a cocktail every once in a while, but I'm not rummaging around like, this is. This is completely foreign to me.

[Robert Evans]

No. There was a period when I was like 19 or 20 where we got one of those big things of just the raw Dr. Pepper syrup. And we would just add that straight to Everclear. Don't do that. Bad idea. That hurt. My.

[Garrison Davis]

That sounds awful.

[Robert Evans]

My stomach immediately hurts.

Yeah. Oh, my God, what a nightmare. So you won't be surprised when I tell you that Lee's GPA was not impressive by the 12th grade. Really?

[Garrison Davis]

Purple Jesus isn't really pulling through in the grades.

[Robert Evans]

No, he's not doing great now. It's kind of an open question whether or not he's even going to graduate until the last possible moment. His psychology teacher comes close to failing him. And his psych teacher actually calls Lee's mom Toddy, because she teaches Spanish at the same school. And as a fun aside, she gave her own son a D once and, like, wrote on the report cardi.

What a bad.

She wrote on the report card, you need more discipline at home. Like, on her son's report card.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

So.

[Robert Evans]

So this teacher goes to Toddy, but.

Also take accountability, my girl.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

What?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean, I think it was a bit, but yeah, ma'. Am. So this teacher goes to Totty, and he's like, I don't know if I can pass your kid. And she's like, yeah, you should just do what's best. And he's like, yeah, I'll do what I think is best for the boy. And ultimately, he passes Lee. Even though the grades weren't there, he decides that Lee, when he would talk in class, he was better. He participated more than anyone else in terms of, like, classroom discussion. Sure. He just again, refused to study homework ever.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And this is the fateful decision that will allow him to go to college. So, I mean, really, never show mercy to a student who's struggling. Teachers out there, you know, that's the lesson of this podcast. No mercy to children. They'll turn into Lee Atwater if you give them a second's grace. So Totty had resigned herself, you know, partway through this year, 12th grade year, to the likelihood that her son would not go to college at all and would wind up working a menial job. Despite his obvious intentions, intelligence, Lee himself wanted to leave from graduation and immediately travel around the south with a friend of his who was a professional musician. And, like, this would be like a vacation. But I think it was also the idea was he was going to explore maybe whether or not he could make it as a musician.

[Garrison Davis]

This sounds like a positive development for a kid like this.

[Robert Evans]

If only, if only. Now, again, it looks likely that this is going to be his path forward because he applies to the University of South Carolina, and he gets Rejected. And that's like, not, no offense, University of South Carolina, but it's not like an Ivy League school, right? Like, his grades are not good, he's getting rejected from like the state school. And Lee keeps this rejection letter in his office for the rest of his life. The fact that he gets this is something he's got this weird sense of pride towards. But before he can start his trip, his mom pulls some strings and she gets him an interview with the Dean of admissions to Newbery College, because she knows the guy and she knows her son. She's well aware of the fact that if he gets face to face with someone, he can charm them.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

Face to face. He's gonna do well, even though his, like, grades and admissions would get easily discarded, but he would be compelling in like an actual, like, meeting.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. And she knows this and she gets him the face to face meeting. And obviously Totty's right. And the dean also seems to have understood Lee pretty well and he kind of plays hard to get. He repeatedly says, I don't think you have what it takes to handle this college, to be a Newbery man.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And this flips a switch in Atwater's head. And so he becomes obsessed with proving the dean wrong. And so they make a deal. If he takes.

[Garrison Davis]

It's a gamified thing.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Yeah, right.

[Robert Evans]

Right now it's a deal. Now I've been challenged. So the deal is if he can take two summer classes at Newbery and do well, he'll get admitted to the fall. And Lee takes and aces both classes, which proves that the only way to get him to actually work hard is to trigger his oppositional defiant, disord. That's the entirety of how this guy works, right?

[Garrison Davis]

What a brat.

[Robert Evans]

He's like the Republican Party distilled into one man. It's just pure oppositional defiance. So Lee enters Newberry in 1969.

[Garrison Davis]

Nice.

[Robert Evans]

This is a tense year for America, for students in America, at colleges in general. A lot going on this year, but not for Lee. Newberry is not kind of in. It's off the beaten path a little bit. It's not one of the schools that's gonna be the center of things happening. Lee later described it as a pretty laid back environment. The anti war movement and the attendant protests had mostly skipped the campus over. And Lee doesn't find himself pushed into political activism immediately. Instead, he gets very into Greek life. And I'm gonna quote from an article by Eric Alterman in the New York Times, Atwater and his fraternity brothers used to Rent black and white pornographic movies and charge $0.50 admission. You can bet nobody asked for their damn money back on those flicks. He volunteers sitting with his wife and parents in the family living room. We weren't like the guys who took your money and then showed a bunch of people horsing around in leotards, sir. He's just talking in front of his wife and kids. Yeah, we showed the best porno in college, sir. We didn't rip you off by showing you fake porno. No, nothing but real naked people fucking in our fraternity.

[Garrison Davis]

He opened a DIY porn theater.

[Robert Evans]

He opens a DIY porn theater. That's how his fraternity makes beer money. It's pretty funny. Now his frat is Alpha Tau Omega. And just for shits and giggles, I was like, I want to see what kind of reputation ATO has.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, I'm sure it's great. I'm sure I'm going to learn some lovely things here.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, Garrison. It would be fair to say in many schools they are regarded as a party house. Just from stories in the last decade, I found an article about a chapter that ato. Yes, Just from that. The last decade. Cause there's not a lot recorded from the 60s, right? A lot of stuff. What's gonna get. Sexual assault's not getting reported generally. Sure, sure, sure. But within the last decade, an ATO chapter at Muhlenberg College was suspended for hazing and life safety violations due to out of control drinking. UNC's chapter got suspended earlier this year for alcohol violations and financial malfeasance. The Ohio State chapter was likewise suspended this year for hazing and alcohol violations. I've also found multiple stories of brothers in different states being investigated for sexual assault over the years. Now Lee is in college decades before these things go down. But cursory examinations suggest that atl, it's just got. It's had a long reputation. It's like, this is a party house, right? That's the case in Lee's day. And that's kind of the legacy of this fraternity up to the present day. This is a party house.

I feel like they got shut down at my college when I was in school.

They get. I found a lot of stories of them getting shut down. This was literally just seconds of Googling, right? Just like a lot of ATO chapters get in trouble. And the fact that this would be a party fraternity is consistent with the stories Lee and his brothers would later tell reporters. He was known for staying up all night drinking, dancing and singing. And then, in his words, would quote Be the guy to wake up the day shift with a flip top at. At 6:00am Sorry. So he's still awake, waking his friends up with a beer at 6 in the morning. You know, to keep the party going.

[Garrison Davis]

Never let the party die.

[Robert Evans]

Never let the party die. Garrison, you remember when I showed you PCU, the classic 90s college film? It's a special movie starring. Starring Parliament Funkadelic. It ends with a P. Funk concert. Great film.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, I do remember this.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, I found an article in the Newbery observer that interviewed Carlos Evans, who is another ATO member and like a future executive. No relation, because he winds up as an executive at Wells Fargo. And Carlos's recollections make Lee's life in this period sound identical to the plot of pcu. Quote, Lee was always joking around and entertaining his fraternity brothers by improving crazy songs on his guitar, Evan said, which made him an ideal social chair for his frat. One slow weekend on campus, no football or planned parties, Atwater came across a band whose trailer had broken down on the side of the road. Already running too late to make it to their gig in the upstate, Atwater convinced them just to stay in Newberry and play there, thus creating an impromptu party. It's just literally the plot of pcu. This just happened to him.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, but his life feels like a lot of different movie plots.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, his life is written by John Hughes. I almost feel like there's a stranger than fiction situation here. He's like Will Ferrell in that movie, but written by John Hughes.

[Garrison Davis]

I also wonder what his thoughts on Wild at Heart are.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

In terms of like, the Elvis blues dancing performance Deception. Like Nic Cage's whole character in that has a slightly similar vibe.

[Robert Evans]

Unfortunately, we'll never get to ask him. Garrison, spoilers for where this episode ends. Speaking of spoilers, you know what can't be spoiled?

[Garrison Davis]

These ads?

[Robert Evans]

The quality. Yeah. The quality of our sponsors. There's no spoiling that shelf life staple.

And yeah, and here's our ads for 1-800-dial-A slut.

That's right.

So really bothered by that.

Yeah, 1-800-dial-A Slut. Ah, you know, somebody. They did offer us a lot of money. Sophie.

[Garrison Davis]

Sophie. Sex. Work is work.

[Robert Evans]

Actually, I was gonna say somebody I know. I just don't like that he did it. I love. I love sluts. Sluts are some of my favorite humans in the whole world. Would be so cool if it wasn't him.

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[Robert Evans]

All right, we're back and we're talking about 1-800-dial-A slut, our newest sponsor. I'm just happy to finally have a sponsor ethically that we can support. You know, finally we have a clean conscience. No longer doing the ads for Blue Apron or whatever, just some honest, God fearing people.

[Garrison Davis]

Are we allowed to say Blue Apron on the pod now or is it still getting bleeped?

[Robert Evans]

No. I don't know. Maybe. We'll see. So Lee's been interested since high school in the political process. But previously it had been a game for him, purely a way to amuse himself. College is where he gets interested and involved in real politics for the first time. And there are two stories about how this happened, right? And they're kind of divergent. I think there's a way to reconcile them. His frat brother Carlos says that, like, basically in his first year, his grades were so shitty that he had to go to summer school in order to not get expelled. And then, per an article in the Newberry observer, while in summer school, Atwater secured an internship with a young senator named Strom thurmond, who was 67 at the time.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, this, this fucking guy.

[Robert Evans]

He came back that fall and he was a totally different person, Evans recalled. His hair was short and his dress conservative. Gone were the remnants of the hippie saturated 1960s. Evans said Attwater went from coming dangerously close to flunking out the previous semester to a straight A student. And Evans said he became highly engaged in his political studies. That was the point when we started to believe that Lee had possibilities beyond being just a jokester and a fun guy, he said.

[Garrison Davis]

So Strom started, like, politically grooming this guy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, that is. Every version of the story has that part. The question is, what leads up to it. Cause Lee and his mom will later tell a different story. Like, instead of it happening in his freshman year. Cause he had to get summer credits. Cause he was failing in the summer of his sophomore year, his mom says she convinced Schrom Thurman to take her son as an intern. And that this ignites his love of politics and gives him direction for the first time in his life. I decided that summer was time to get serious. And, yeah. Thurmond was by this point, a Republican. And in a Congress that was still full of white supremacists. He was the one who was famous for being a white supremacist, the most supremacist of the whites, the whitest of the supremacists, and the supremacist of the whites. He and Lee got along very well. Per the New York Times, Thurmond remembers a bright young boy of extraordinary energy and charm who in seven years progressed from college intern to political director of Thurman's reelection campaign. Atwater remembers listening to a man who embodied for him the virtues of Southern conservatism, economic libertarianism, a strong military opposition to federal interference. Both men insist that the historical identification of Thurmond with the segregation is unfair. The issue then, as now, Thurmond insists, was states rights. And there's a couple of things about that. First off, the discrepancy between his frat brother's story and in his mom's story, I think is easy to reconcile. I think his frat brother got the year wrong, which is easy to do decades later. I think his grades were shitty, probably in his sophomore year. And I think his mom got him this internship because he needed summer credit to not get kicked out of school, and she pulled another favor. That's kind of my way of reconciling this. But also, there's a good documentary about Lee Atwater, and it interviews a lot of his friends at the time. And a couple of different people who knew him will say variations of the same thing, which is that he didn't believe in conservatism. He was not ideologically. He could have done worked for either party and been just as happy. But he saw there was more of a place for him in the Republican Party, in part because the Republican Party at the start of the 70s is a party in massive transition. One of the things that has happened is that they have bled young people. And Lee has an idea for getting young people to join the party. And there's just more of an opportunity because the party is in flux, because they're realigning. He can find a place for himself there. And the Democratic Party, he can't find as much of a place for himself there. It would be harder to insert himself and make a name for himself. And so some of the people who knew Lee will argue that's the only reason why he gets involved in the Republican Party, is that this is where he can make a name for himself. And that's the only thing he actually cares about.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Whatever the case. Cause in that version of events, he doesn't give a shit that Strom Thurmond is an economic libertarian and loves a strong military. He just, again, this is a guy he can. Because he's kind of disgraced and whatnot. I can get involved in it, and I've got an inn. This is where my N is. It'll be easiest for me to succeed here.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. He seems more interested in music and performance on a personal level than politics, even though he enjoys the process of it. And it seemed like he had saw more opportunity for innovative work and having fun with the process in the Republican Party at the time compared to the Democratic Party.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And the process is what he cares about. So who gives a shit what the politics he's fighting for are? You know, we need. We.

[Garrison Davis]

We need him. We need one of him for the left.

[Robert Evans]

We sure do. You get that from some of his friends who are like, can you? If only he had picked it different, the other party, you know, we might have all been better off.

[Garrison Davis]

We're gonna be looking for a Lee Atwater of the left.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

That's what we need. Not a fucking Joe Rogan, a Lee Atwater. Somebody who can fucking play hardball. At any rate, every version of the Lee Atwater story is consistent. That at this time, Strom Thurmond causes. You know, his time with Thurman causes him to take his life seriously.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And he's a different guy when he comes back to school. 1972, the year after his internship, is an election year. And Atwater is determined to do his part to get Richard Nixon re elected. He realized that frat boys are Nixon's natural candidacy. And he starts using frat parties and events to sign up other young men to register as Republicans and support Nixon. And this expands to. He runs a large get out the vote effort in South Carolina and signs up 12,000 people. This is a feat no one gets close to equaling. No single person gets close to equaling in this period of time. Like Lee is head and shoulders above anyone else in terms of like their ability to do that for Republicans.

[Garrison Davis]

That's a lot of people for an.

[Robert Evans]

Election at this time, yes, that's a big deal. And this is what drives Lee to do it in the first place, right? It's not dedication to Nixon, it's a desire to prove himself the best, to get the most to be. To break the record, right? I've signed up the most people. That's what is appealing to him is it's a way he can win and set himself up as special. His frat brother, Carlos Evans claimed. I would say the thing that really made him different was that he was incredibly competitive. He was very much focused on winning at every level. Lee's performance was so shocking and noteworthy that he earned the attention of the Republican party itself in 1973. The next year, as a result of this feat, he is appointed National Director of the College Republicans by party chairman George H.W. bush.

[Garrison Davis]

This fucking guy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. And this is. Unfortunately, H.W. bush has picked his man. Well, cuz Lee is really good at this. Like the number of registered like college age Republicans increases massively.

He's organizing and polarizing after this period of time.

He is really good at this. He's going all around different campuses, he's giving speeches. He is very good at getting young men. And again, he's this very modern figure of. It's this mix of like crude humor and misogyny and kind of veiled racism that he's using to like get these young men. Be like, no, no, no, you don't want to like do this hippie bullshit and vote for the left. Like you wanna, like your interests are being served by the Republican Party, man.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Like that's who you need to be with. And he's very good at this. And that's the first couple of years of Lee's political career is like reforming and turning College Republicans into a major force, right? And there's a lot of butting heads. He has a lot of direct competition and winds up in a lot of like ugly fights with other people that he always wins. Anyone who kind of challenges him for power, he beats the absolute piss out of because he's just, he's just extraordinarily good at this sort of thing, which is. It's just great. You love to see this kind of shit. So, yeah, before we discuss Lee's meteoric rise, what happens after this point, I should peel back and give y' all a little refresher on how Republican Party politics evolved from the 50s to the start of the 70s, which is, you know, the course of Lee's life to date.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

This is during the period of time from when he is born to when he starts being a political actor himself. Traditionally, Republicans, the party of Lincoln held the north, and the south was a Democratic stronghold. And that had started changing dramatically in the early 20th century, which is often summarized as the two parties basically switching platforms. The reality is a lot more complex, but by the time FDR comes around, this realignment is well underway.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And this leaves Republicans in a bind. Southern Democrats now felt alienated from the rest of the party, but the main way to reach them was with racists. And every year, it got harder to just say, I hate black people and win an election. Enter the Southern Strategy. The gist of the Southern Strategy is that you advertise policies that hurt black people and maybe help white people. That part's not actually necessary without saying, that's why you're doing it. Now, there's a lot of debate over how much of a role the Southern Strategy in particular plays in this post Civil Rights act realignment, because this starts in the earliest 20th century, but it's after the 57th Civil Rights act that the realignment really speeds up and that the Democratic Party really loses the South. That's when all that really happens. And so there's debate and valid debate by political historians over how much credit do we give the Southern Strategy as opposed to these other things that are going on at the time. The phrase itself, the Southern Strategy, gets popular after 1970, when Nixon political strategist Kevin Phillips gives an interview for the New York Times in which he says, among other things, from now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20% of the Negro vote, and they don't need any more than that. The party's political future, he argued, was in making sure Southern whites saw Democrats as the party of black people. This would convince them to switch parties and vote Republican.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And again, we can debate how much of a factor this is in the realignment and, you know, how. What happens to the south and becoming a Republican stronghold. But it's certainly a big part of it, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Totally.

[Robert Evans]

And Lee Atwater is going to. He's gonna come start getting into politics literally, like a year or two after this. This Nixon strategist has laid out the whole strategy on, like, in this interview. And this is always going to be a part of his understanding of how politics works right now. One of his early political triumphs is when he's still like with the College Republicans. There's a contest. There's an election to see who's going to be chairman of the College Republicans between Karl Rove and a guy named Robert Edgeworth. Karl Rove. A lot of you millennials will know he was George Bush's campaign manager during Bush's campaigns. Like, he's the guy who got W elected. He's famous as being a slime. Just look at a picture of Karl Rove. He looks like he's slithered in on a slime trail. No man has ever looked more like a snail than Karl fucking Rove. Like, touching him, his skin has the consistency of wet. You can just tell it by looking at a picture. Sophie, pull the fucker up. I see him. You see him? You see him, Gary?

[Garrison Davis]

I got him.

[Robert Evans]

He's beautiful. He's beautiful, isn't he?

[Garrison Davis]

I got a face full of Rove right now.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he's just a majestic animal. Very smooth.

[Garrison Davis]

Very smooth skin.

[Robert Evans]

Incredibly smooth guy. Incredibly smooth guy. Just in terms of his actual, like, texture. And to quote from an article in PBS's website, quote, Rove lost. But Atwater mounted an appeal of Edgeworth's victory. The contest was ultimately decided by then Republican national committee chairman George H.W. bush, who gave the election to Rove. That was a pretty early lesson for Karl Rove from Lee, says Joe Conison of the Nation and salon.com, that you could play the hardest of hardball and get away with it. And what Rove is or what Atwater is doing here is he just starts challenging individual votes, and he just keeps coming up with. And they're bullshit challenges, like the other guy had won. But he creates enough doubt that he's able to create space for Bush to come in and just decide the election. It's kind of a version of what the Supreme Court will do for W in 2000.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

The fact that this is how Karl Rove gets his start in politics, and this is a lot very similar to what happens to W in 2000. Not a coincidence. It's cool stuff. I'm glad that that started.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's really depressing. So Lee Atwater in the early to mid-70s, is an early. A chief acolyte and practitioner of the Southern strategy. You know, he. He's this huge figure in getting the College Republicans organized, and he graduates from that to being a campaign. Like, he's like a. He's like a mercenary campaign strategist and, you know, aide or whatnot like you'll bring him on if you need a dirty tricks guy. And he proved himself incredibly good at that. One of his first big jobs in 1978 is working as an advisor to Strom Thurmond's reelection campaign. It's here he would notch his first major victory. The guy that Thurmond is running against is Charles Ravenel, who the Times described as the then rising young star of Charleston politics. Lee set himself to the task of strangling Ravenel's career in the cradle. Through relentless digging, he came across a quote from Ravenel in a small. This is how he describes it. He finds, like an interview in a small weekly newspaper called Manhattan east, quoting Charles Ravenel as having told a Park Avenue fundraiser that if elected, he'd be the third senator from New York. And you see what he's. The quote is him basically saying, like, I know I'm running, you know, in South Carolina, but if I get elected, you know, if you donate and help me get elected, I'll vote like a senator from New York.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

This shouldn't be legal right now. Ravenel denies ever saying this. There's no actual evidence that he says this. And the rumor is that Atwater planted the story. He either bribed a reporter or an editor to put an article in this tiny paper with minimal circulation, cuz it didn't need to get read by people. There just need to be something he could grab and then like read out and have put in attack ads.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, he can turn it into a problem.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And this quote becomes the single most repeated claim in Thurman's attack ads against Ravenel. And again, I can't tell you to a point of certainty that he planted that story. But if he did, it wasn't the only time he did that in a 1978 election. Because that same year, he also consulted on a House of Representatives race for his old friend, Carroll Campbell. This is, you know, we talked about their friendship. They were buddies in high school and their competition.

[Garrison Davis]

Of soup fame.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, of soup fame. Of the Campbell's fortune. Their competition is a guy named Max Heller. At the time, Max Heller was the mayor of Greenville. He was also Jewish and a literal Holocaust survivor.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He had like, nearly survived all. Oh, yeah, this is going in such a dark direction. Per the New York Times, Atwater's accusers claim that as an informal advisor to Campbell, he passed secret polling information to Don Sprouse, a third party candidate who then used the information to undermine Heller's campaign. Political analyst Alan Barron has revealed that Campbell's pollster in 1978, Arthur J. Finkelstein of Irvington, New York told him data showed South Carolina voters would reject a foreign born Jew who did not believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior. Marvin Chernoff, a Democratic consultant in Columbia, claims that Atwater specifically told him of passing Finkelstein's secret poll to Sprouse. And Atwater denies this. But Sprouse is literally going up to Max Heller and being like, do you believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior? And like saying like, I think at one point he basically asked like, did the Jews crucify Jesus? Like, it's really anti Semitic shit. And this is not. This is not Campbell. That's not the guy that Atwater's working for. It's this third party who he is using to be to put this racist stuff out so that voters are thinking, well, this guy's not really a Christian, right? And they're also, they're not tying Campbell to the anti Semitism. So he gets the best of both worlds.

[Garrison Davis]

It comes from a different origin.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Yeah, right, right.

[Robert Evans]

And this is the way Atwater works.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And you know, he denies this. There's significant evidence in a number of people who tie him to this happening. Finkelstein and all of the Campbell campaign staffers deny the accusations too. But Campbell's campaign manager has since admitted to a late night meeting with Sprouse representatives in a Greenville parking lot before the election. And the Finkelstein poll released by Campbell did ask voters to compare how they would feel about a race between a Jewish immigrant and a native South Carolinian.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, that's good. That's expert stuff.

[Robert Evans]

It's all, this is all very, very Lee Atwater shit.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And if true, these allegations are just entirely consistent with what we've already seen from Lee in high school. This is the guy who's making up fake polls to swing elections. Atwater is also engaging during the 78 election in more skullduggery on Thurmond's behalf.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

To help the segregationist senators shake off some of the bad PR from his constant public racism. And this really shows you how smart Atwater is. His solution to the problem of Thurman being a famous racist is very innovative. He has campaign representatives announce that they're throwing all of their efforts into getting out the black vote. Thurmond goes so far as to send his six year old daughter to an integrated public school. So it looks like Thurmond's really trying to reform his image and get black people to vote for him, but they know that's not gonna work. This is a feint.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Black people are not gonna vote for Strom Thurmond, and Atwater knows it. But Ravenel's campaign, he knows, is going to panic when they see Thurmond going out for this vote. And they're gonna redouble their efforts to get the black people to vote, which.

[Garrison Davis]

Is already gonna go to them.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, and that's, that's number one. They're not focusing then on the other votes they need to get. And also it's going to convince the white voters who is really who. The primary amount of Atwater's PR is going out towards that. Well, this other guy is campaigning for black people.

[Garrison Davis]

He only cares about the white people.

[Robert Evans]

He doesn't care about white people.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's the strategy, and it works perfectly. A Democratic Party operative at the time summarized the results. The Ravenel campaign looked like it spent all its time going after black voters. While swing voters are turned off, they vote for Thurmond and he retains his seat. So, yeah, that's where we are at 1978. Lee's gotten his political career off to a rousing start.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, that's a smart operation.

[Robert Evans]

It's a smart operation. Evil but smart. Speaking of evil but smart, the sponsors of our podcast, all very evil but all geniuses. So why fight them? You know, just let it happen to you.

[Garrison Davis]

If you can't beat them, if you.

[Robert Evans]

Can'T beat them, take their money.

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[Bethenny Frankel]

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[Robert Evans]

Ugh. Come on.

[Bethenny Frankel]

Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back. So by 1980, Lee Atwater's got himself a reputation not as a great political thinker or even as like the best campaign strategist, but as a connoisseur of dirty tricks. And so wherever a Republican is in trouble, he is increasingly the guy they call for or Increasingly, the guy the RNC sends their way to set off a couple of bombs, right? He is their secret weapon. Like, we can deploy Lee anywhere we need. We need some extra help, and we're willing to be unethical with it.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

They just like. They just, like, airdrop him in with a parachute.

[Robert Evans]

He's the 82nd Airborne of being a scummy political campaign manager.

[Garrison Davis]

Takes off his flight suit, has a black suit underneath, briefcase, ready to go.

[Robert Evans]

Ready to go. For example, in the 1980s South Carolina congressional race, he was brought in to do push polling for Representative Floyd. Speaker Spence was running against former state senator Tom Turnipseed. That is a real name.

[Bethenny Frankel]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

I just really gotta focus on that.

[Garrison Davis]

I've heard of Tom Turnipseed before.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Tom Turnipseed.

[Garrison Davis]

It's a name you can't forget.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's impossible to forget Tom Turnipseed. Now, as a child, when he's like, a teenage boy, Tom has depression and he has to undergo shock therapy, like electroshock therapy for his depression, which is, I think, probably was unnecessary at the time, but it's also a not uncommon treatment at the time, and obviously not something he has any choice in because he's a child. Not that this should be stigmatizing, but I don't think it's often unnecessary when it's given in this period of time for stuff like this. Tom had discussed this in public. He had been open about the fact that as a kid, he struggled with mental health and he went through this kind of treatment. This is the thing he talked about. Cause he admirably, I think, wanted to destigmatize mental health treatments. And unfortunately, this is going to make him incredibly vulnerable to Lee Atwater. So at the same time that Lee picks up on the fact that Tom's undergone electroshock therapy, he finds out that Tom is a member of the NAACP and has been a civil rights activist.

[Garrison Davis]

So he started off as a segregationist and then saw the light, I guess.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he's been good for a while on it. And Lee is going to frame this as he's a radical leftist black supremacist.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He gets anonymous guys to do push calls or push polls where they're saying, are you comfortable voting for a man with ties to the NAACP who's like a radical civil rights activist? And at the same time, are you comfortable voting for a man who received electroshock therapy for his severe mental illness?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Okay. All right, buddy.

[Robert Evans]

On its own, that's not enough to spin the election. Because push pulls only reach so many people. So he's got a question of how do I launder the electroshock therapy thing into becoming a central campaign issue without looking evil looking like I'm trying to do it? And Atwater finds a solution. He finds a couple of reporters. He's giving a press conference, and he's talking with a couple of reporters before the press conference. And he brings up the electroshock therapy thing in order to be like. Like basically say, you should ask me about this.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He's planting the question in their heads, right? So they ask him about this and, you know, he gives an answer and they ask him something else about Tom Turnipseed. And he responds being like, I'm not going to respond to allegations made by someone who's been hooked up to jumper cables.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Like, that's the way he frames this. Like, he gets this brought up so that he can say, I don't have to to answer questions from a man who got hooked up to jumper gear.

[Garrison Davis]

He has this retort pre planned, and this was all a scheme just to.

[Robert Evans]

Say that he sets up the questions so that he can give that answer.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So turnip seed loses, and Lee's dirty tricks are often given some of the blame. Now, when I was doing my research, I was curious as to how Atwater planted questions with the press. And it seems like he had a few different ways of doing this. But what surprised me was that he would openly acknowledge to the journalists that he used this way after doing so. This is a quote from an article by Ellen Randolph in the New York Times. Lee Bandy, a respected political journalist for the state newspaper in South Carolina, recalled the time he accidentally helped one of Mr. Atwater's candidates, the former governor Ronald Reagan of California. Later, Mr. Bandy recalled that Lee laughed and said, bandy, you got used. So he celebrates this. He likes being like. He wants you to know when he's done this, for one, that he's proud of it.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right? Right.

[Garrison Davis]

It's like he can't help himself.

[Robert Evans]

No. Now, Lee's main gig in 1980 was working as the Southern regional coordinator for Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. @ this point, the Southern Strategy had been named for at least a decade and practiced for much longer. But Lee had notes, and he suggested a revision to his bosses. After getting nominated, he urged Reagan should start his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. And before this, by the way, he does, like, a fuck job on Bush. Like, he's helping Reagan kind of win the primary against Bush, which is Going to piss off Bush a bit, but it's just not as interesting as his crimes against less deserving people.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I mean it makes sense. Cause like Reagan's a performer.

[Robert Evans]

So Reagan's a performer.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So after getting nominated, he urges Reagan to start his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. And if you look at videos from this, it's just white people in the crowd.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And his point to doing this is to like he's basically got a revamped version of the Southern Strategy. Writing for the Nation, Antonio d' Ambrosio describes this as a not so subtle attempt to make race a central part of Reagan's presidential bid. It worked. In an article for the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley, John Powell goes into more detail. They did so revamped the Southern Strategy, but not only by criticizing federal civil rights legislation and impugning federal desegregation orders, but by railing against busing, government dependency and welfare. Or by espousing such seemingly race neutral ideas as states rights and local control as signals to preserve Jim Crow from federal intrusion. Even without making explicitly racist comments, the dog whistle was clearly heard by those who were its intended recipients. These strategies combined, called the Southern Strategy, was designed to create a national Republican majority. Built in part on white resentment. The dog whistle worked because it was heard and understood by the conservative white base, yet not by more moderate and northern whites. It meant activating racial resentment for one part of the population while denying that fact to the rest. The Southern Strategy married the conservative politics antipathy to marginal tax rates and civil rights, labor and environmental regulations to corporate entities with culturally conservative antipathy towards civil rights, women's rights and gay rights.

[Garrison Davis]

And we've been stuck here ever since.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, this is a huge success. And to be clear, I'm not giving Lee Atwater all of the credit for Reagan winning. He doesn't deserve it. He's not the main guy leading the campaign, but he has a significant role in the south and he's a big part of. He like convinces him to do his, you know, to do that first big meeting in Mississippi. He has a major role in shaping how Reagan campaigns.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

You know, and it's worth debating how integral was he to Reagan's ultimate victory in his first term. But people within the party certainly saw him as having played a significant role. Cuz he gets a job in the White House.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And he basically has to have one created for him. And there is fighting against this cause a lot of people don't trust him because he's the dirty tricks guy.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Why would you want the dirty tricks guy in the White House.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Right. But they create basically an entry level position for him where he's like White House Deputy Political Director.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's the job that he gets under Reagan. Now in 1981, he's one of like the.

[Garrison Davis]

One of like the supporting characters in V. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

But he's also kind of a mastermind behind the scenes because he starts scheming as soon as he gets into this job. We'll talk about that. But in 1981, just as he's settling into the White House, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University named Alex Lammis reaches out to Lee. Lammas is one of the first people outside of the Republican Party who noticed that Atwater's not just another consultant willing to get his hands dirty, but he's someone who's changing the way the game is played. He's someone with a generational understanding of how politics works that is shifting the way politics is done.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. By playing the game the way he does, he's actually changing the fundamental rules of the game.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes, exactly. And this guy Lammis is one of the first people to realize it. And he interviews Lee and it's kind of part on and part off the record, but all of it's recorded. And this recording gives us a fascinating insight. This is the thing that's famous about Lee is this quote of him explaining the Southern Strategy in this interview. If you've ever read about it, you've read that quote of Lee Atwater, and for a long time people didn't know is this really Lee or not? Because, like, the name kind of was out there. This interviewer had basically claimed it, but, like, no one was proof. There was no proof until fairly recently when the audio got released. And now you can hear him, which we're going to hear in a little bit.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Bit.

[Robert Evans]

But the interview gives, like, a really fascinating insight into Lee's expectations on the future of progress and how he talked about stuff like racism in politics. He asserts in the interview, my generation will be the first generation of Southerners that won't be prejudiced. And this seems rich coming from a guy who repeatedly campaigned on race.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But Atwater's argument is that. No, no, I got. I did a lot to get guys like Thurman to shut up about the Civil Rights and Voting act and just focus on fiscal conservatism and cutting social programs and drugs.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

His argument is that the Southern Strategy is actually a step forward because you're hiding the racism.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And there's a degree of. I don't know if it's shame or guilt that he has when talking about how the Southern strategy works, because Lames basically asks him, like, how do you square this belief that Southerners aren't racist with this whole strategy based on racism? And Lee gives this answer that's gonna become super famous, One of the most famous quotes in the history of US Politics. And he prefaces it by saying, now, y' all aren't gonna quote me on this, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Jesus.

[Robert Evans]

When they assure him they aren't, and they kinda don't. But anyway, here's what he says. We're gonna play you the famous quote. This is the actual audio of Lee saying it. There's a good chance you've read this, but yeah, yeah, now y' all are.

[I]

Quoting me on this. You start out in 1940, 1954 by saying, Nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968, you can't say nigger. That hurts your backfire. So you say stuff like force busing, states rights and all that stuff. And you're getting so abstract now. You're talking about cutting taxes. And all of these things you're talking about are totally economic things. And the byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously, maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, that we're doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me?

[Robert Evans]

I don't know if that's truly. It's interesting though, that he kind of seems like he has to believe that. That, like, this awful racist strategy is justified because we're doing away with more racism than we're embracing.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I mean, like, does he view this as, like, a form of, like, progress in a way? I mean, I guess he kind of does. That's part of what he's outlining in the clip.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, but the.

[Garrison Davis]

The effect is still the same.

[Robert Evans]

Right? And that's the. And the, you know, it's an open question. Does he really think that he's actually reduced racism at all? Does he really think that this is better in that way, or is this just what he wants this academic to believe because he doesn't want to. To have the. He doesn't want to have the legacy of a racist.

[Interviewee / Political Analyst]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, at least he wasn't quoted on that.

[Robert Evans]

At least he wasn't quoted on that until now. And yeah, I think that's a good point to end. We'll be Doing three parts this week. So you'll get them all this week, folks. Next episode on Thursday. Garrison, anything you want to plug before we close out for the day?

[Garrison Davis]

Well, our show, it could happen here, which you are also on, Robert. And our weekly news roundup on a cadpenier called Executive Disorder, which now has its own special feed which we've been working on for a long time. A whole bunch of different series that myself, James Stout and Robert has put together. Have their own feeds on a cadpin here now, so it's easier to find episodes all in the same following the same story, like Myanmar, Cop City, and also Executive Disorder. So yeah, that's the main thing. Also, I occasionally tell a mix of humor and jokes based on terrorism at a bar in Brooklyn that you can. If you know, you know, if you're a gay person in Brooklyn, you can figure it out.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, there you go. Go find Garrison in Brooklyn. Or maybe don't do that. Jesus, Robert, you know, do something. Do something. Yeah. Even if it's bad, as long as you're taking action, that's all that matters. It's okay if it's evil.

[Garrison Davis]

I feel like you're really internalizing.

[Robert Evans]

Uh huh.

[Garrison Davis]

Lee's life.

[Robert Evans]

The Lee Atwater strategy. Hurt as many people as you want. As long as you're doing something, anything to quiet the sound of your brother screaming as he boils alive in oil.

[Garrison Davis]

Christ.

[Robert Evans]

You do have to keep remembering that every one of these things he's doing, whenever you look at Lee, he's just smiling blankly at you. You have to imagine in his head the only sound going on instead of static, it's just his brother screaming as he dies.

[Garrison Davis]

This sucks.

[Robert Evans]

Good stuff.

I am excited that at the bottom of this page in the script where we're gonna get some. We're gonna get some black manafort in stone.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, you did call it Garrison. Roger Stone is a key part of this story. Yes, yes. All that and more things to look.

Forward to, my friends.

Part Art Trace. All right, everybody get off the Internet now.

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards.

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[Robert Evans]

This is an I Heart podcast.