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Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story

An excellent and frightening documentary

By GERALD PEARY | October 25, 2008

3.0 Stars

Barack Obama is darn lucky that Lee Atwater, who died in 1991, isn’t around to lead the Republican dirty-tricks department. As seen in Stefan Forbes’s excellent and frightening documentary, Atwater would have figured how to play the race card in such a devastating way that Sarah Palin would have sailed into the vice-presidency. It was Atwater, a scrappy and insecure cracker from nowhere South Carolina, who as campaign manager for George W. Bush turned the patrician Yale man into a Texas good old boy and convinced America that Mike Dukakis, son of Greek immigrants, was an Eastern elitist who let African-American rapists out on furlough. Karl Rove learned everything from this take-no-prisoners Republican operative, and George W. palled around with him, two frats on the loose. Dying of cancer, Atwater penned apologies to everyone he hurt along the way. There’s been no apology from George Bush Sr., who is the ultimate villain of this effective muckraking piece. 86 minutes | Coolidge Corner

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