Politics Unredeemed

Last night I saw the Frontline special: Boogie Man, the Story of Lee Atwater. It was aired 11/11 and if you have On Demand you can go back and see it.

Lee Atwater was the mastermind of dirty tricks used in the re-election of Ronald Reagan in 1984, but became a Republican star by 1988 when he engineered the Willie Horton ad and other outright lies about Michael Dukakis to get the first George Bush elected. After that coup, he was named head of the Republican National Committee during the first year of 41's White House tenure. From there he began early digging into the background and the subsequent smearing in 1989 of the young governor from Arkansas who would eventually beat GHWB in 1992. But Atwater was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1990 and it killed him by 1991. He recanted on his death bed, confessing that what he did was wrong and it was also bad for the country.

What matters here is this: Atwater begat Rove and Rove begat Schmidt (McCain's mastermind the last three months of his ugly campaign). To this day they all regard Atwater as a genius at political maneuvering and bending the truth to achieve the only goal: winning. The interesting aspect watching this was seeing how those "tricks" were used in the 2008 campaign. And the best part is this: it didn't work this time.

When will they ever learn? Why were his proteges not listening to what he said during his last conscious days? Almost twenty years after Atwater's last big coup, the politics of hate and division (wedge issues) has failed. I hope and pray there are strong Republicans who will rebuild and reinvent their party based on principles , not dirty tricks.

Brave New World, Part 2

Last night I walked down to my local Bank of America ATM to deposit a check. This is one of those storefront 10 by 10 well-lit ATMs right out on a busy city street, hardly a dangerous place to transact with your money, but still anything can happen. I lived in New York city for twenty years, right through the "homeless" 80s. In those days, ATMs were dimly lit and beggars stood there and sometimes jumped you until Citibank put cops nearby.

Since the Obama victory, people are talking about a shift in how we see people of color: African Americans, Asians, Latinos, even Middle Easterners. When I inserted my card to enter the small space, already there at the two machines were six young men, all dark-skinned and no one over the age of (maybe) twenty. They spoke Spanish and they were somewhat fidgety.

My self-protective radar went up and I thought about what to do. I took the deposit envelope and when they finished I put in my check, but noticed they were standing nearby and not yet leaving, even though it seemed they had finished their own transactions. I decided to not take out any cash.

When I turned around one of them went back to the ATM with the others looking on. He had a wad of cash to deposit but was confused and awkward. finally he turned back to me and asked in Spanish how to do a "deposito". He didn't realize he needed the deposit envelope for the cash. He handed me 480 dollars and I sealed the envelope and went to the machine to watch and coach him through it. And it was a good thing. He kept hitting "cheques" instead of "ahorra". Anyway, he got it right, finally and thanked me. They, all six of them thanked me.

In five minutes of my life, fear turned to trust, to my natural ability to take care of others. This is a new day. Know hope.