Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater.

• Author: Carville, James

The Prince

Of Spin

At the height of his powers Lee Atwater attained a level of spin that made you stand in awe. He was just so good at it. Obsessive bright, paradoxical, ambitious, a scheming but likable guy. From Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater by John Brody emerges a portrait of a man who was all of these things. Trustworthy? You could trust Atwater to always act in his own interests. Lee Atwater was a man who was obsessed with Lee Atwater, and now here's this book obsessed with the same thing.

Brody is the Jack Webb of political biography - "Just the facts, ma'am," - and his book is relentless in its details. If you wanted to know that Atwater named his first political consulting firm Baker & Associates after a man whose portrait he had purchased at a garage sale and that its office was situated above a chicken-wing restaurant, here's the goods. It's fascinating that someone went to the trouble. Not only does Brody tell you that James Brown attended Atwater's funeral, he gives you the color of the Godfather of Soul's shirt (black) and tie (white).

Brody had access to Atwater's childhood scrapbook, his high-school letters to his mother, his incomplete doctoral thesis, his medical records. (My wife, however, takes vehement issue with Brody's assertion that Atwater was abandoned by the Republican National Committee. It's not my role to defend the RNC, but I was dating my wife at the time, and I do happen to know first-hand that they paid for the staff that was attending to him at the end, his car, his driver, the hot tub that was built in his backyard, and his around-the-clock nursing.) Brody also accumulated a tape deck full of unvarnished conversations among the major Republican players in the White House and on the campaign trail. And I thought it was just Democrats who talked to reporters. These people talked about everything!

Atwater's political successes are well-documented here. After losing a South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary for General William Westmoreland, he had the dry heaves for two days (I can relate to that), but things went pretty much straight up from there. It's been proved over and over again that the public likes stories about process, and there's some good inside baseball about Atwater's early technique. I liked his approach to manufacturing a response to a candidate's speech - strategically placing loudly enthusiastic supporters at home plate down in front of the microphone and then putting...