Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater

 By John Brady

Chapter One: Defining Events
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.                
  --Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

If Lee Atwater learned one thing during his brief but crowded lifetime, it was how to handle the media. He used the same manipulative skills to orchestrate press coverage as he had applied to developing as a musician over the years. The spin doctor was always in. Even when a reporter had done a little homework, which was surprisingly rare, and tried to get "up close and personal," Atwater knew how to change the topic or cut things short. Magazine writers could be a problem, of course. They usually wanted to hang out for a day or two, and it could be tough to avoid the personal stuff. Even then, if his brother Joe ever came up, Lee made light of the accident that had happened when he was a youngster, as though he barely remembered it. Hardly meant a thing at all. Then he'd put on that tough, bad-boy demeanor that the press gobbled up. "I think I learned pretty early that in the end it's only you," he once reflected stoically. "To an extent, you're all alone." But Joe never left Lee alone for long.

Lee liked to say that a winning campaign was marked by a series of defining events along the path to victory. Events that define who we are. If life is like a campaign, the defining event for Lee Atwater occurred in the kitchen of a little house in Aiken, South Carolina, on the Tuesday afternoon of October 5, 1956. Toddy Atwater had been struggling all week with a sinus infection, and that day she had inhaled a bunch of fumes as she stripped paint from an old iron bed. A splitting headache--and where was Harvey? In eight years of marriage, he had never been late for dinner. Not once. And now the kids were starting to bounce, especially Lee, so wiry and impatient. "Where's Daddy?" he asked.
Harvey Atwater, known for his punctuality, was listening to a late-arriving client drone on. Normally, Harvey left his office at the insurance company by five-thirty, and he'd be walking through the door to Toddy and the boys by now. But he didn't know the man well enough to cut him short, so he decided to wait him out. It was nearly six o'clock. A half hour late.

Toddy thought Harvey might have had trouble with his car, another in a line of junk heaps. "Let's make some donuts while we're waiting for Daddy," she said to the boys. Lee drifted into the living room to watch TV. Joe began to snoop around the stove.

How different the boys were, thought Toddy. Even though she often dressed them alike, they differed both physically and temperamentally. Lee, who would be six in February, was blond with a crewcut, all hard and wiry, tightly wound, impatience on wheels. Joe, at three, was more soft and cuddly, with brown curly hair, rounded cheeks, and a gentle disposition. The only thing the two had in common was striking blue eyes, and a brotherly bond that was starting to surface. "I've got me a playmate for the rest of my life!" Lee had announced to his parents a few weeks earlier. Lee worshipped his little brother. But Joe was star-crossed. Harvey and Toddy had already had a premonition that something was going to happen to the child. In the spring of that year he had nearly died after an awful bout with the measles. Then, during a spring storm, Joe had been sitting in front of a window fan that was struck by lightning. When that occurred, they were relieved.

"If the Lord were going to take him," Toddy told her husband, "he'd have let that lightning strike him today. I don't guess anything's going to happen now."

She found the deep-fat fryer that her father had given her the previous year. She set it atop the stove, filled it with oil, plugged in the cord, and waited for it to reach 340 degrees. Joe climbed up on the trash can to get a closer look. "Joe, get down!" said Toddy. "That grease is hot!"

As Joe started to get down, the trash can toppled. Instinctively, his hand reached out and grasped the cord. The fryer tipped. The boiling oil came down over Joe on the floor. In one horrifying instant, Toddy Atwater knew that her son was going to die. The screaming began.

Harvey Atwater came through the door. In a panic, he reached for a jar of rice and started throwing it wildly in the air. Lee ran into the kitchen and saw Joe lying there, his skin starting to peel. Toddy was hysterical. They wrapped Joe in sheets and got him to the hospital. Joe's burns covered 90 percent of his body, and he had lost his right eye to the scalding liquid. Toddy stayed that night and into the morning. "Mama, please don't cry," Joe kept saying. "Please don't cry."

Three days later, as Joe was being buried, a neighbor went into the house on Wildwood Road and removed his clothing, shifted some furniture around. Toddy wanted to move to another house, but Harvey insisted, "No, we've got to face it." But they didn't.

Silence fell on the family like an admission of careless neglect and complicity. Lee clung to his mother. "Repression is a terrible thing," their minister told Toddy one day. "Remember, you and Harvey can express your grief, but Lee can't." But there was no room for religious consolation now, or for a long time. If there was a God, how could he let that happen to a little kid? That was the reasoning. That was the anger. Neither Toddy nor Harvey could mention Joe without breaking into tears.

Lee would hear Joe's little voice lifted in pain for the rest of his life.

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