If anyone wonders, as I have, why and how issues in local and other political campaign matter less now than digging up dirt about an opponent, they will find their answer when they see “ATWATER Fixin’ to Die, now playing in the Three Penny Theater—a California Stage at 1745 25th Street.

Author Robert Myers capsules the history of Southerner Harvey Leroy Atwater, the man who diverted the focus of political campaigns from discussing serious issues facing voters locally and nationally to uncovering, distorting and publicizing a candidate’s personal characteristics with no relevance to the qualifications for the job. Atwater’s unethical campaign management strategy vilified and twisted those characteristics subjectively into a fatal personality flaw to persuade gullible voters to rally behind the candidate for whom he was working.

He first practiced his unprincipled techniques successfully at the local level in a Southern state’s election rising to near perfection as the power behind the defeat of presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis. Under the direction of Vada Russell, Eric Baldwin, star of the one-man show, brings the late Atwater back to life for brief 90 minutes.

A director “note” in the play’s program sets theatre goers to thinking. She asks them a “What if . . . ? Ronald Wilson Reagan had never been elected President? George H.W. Bush had never been elected President? Karl Rove had never been inspired to be come a modern day Machiavelli?”

I would add a couple more.   Would President Obama’s critics feel so comfortable and justified in engaging in their despicable tactics to oppose and discredit his every move while piously claiming no racial prejudice guilt as Atwater did?  Would Dick Armey's orchestrated "Tea Party" participants who stood outside our capitol building here in Sacramento have carried signs displaying such distorted messages?   

The Director goes on, “Would the outbreak of AIDS in the early 80’s have been allowed to spread unchecked? Would the Iron Curtain have fallen when it did? Would we have had the first Gulf War? The second? Would George W. Bush have become Governor of Texas let alone the 43rd President of the United States?”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, put your hands together for Harvey Leroy Atwater. Welcome to his particular brand of politics, where grown men behave like adolescence boys brimful of energy and testosterone, soaked with wet dreams of power locked and loaded with desire to win . . . no matter what the cost--sound familiar?"

I suggest seeing the play to judge for yourself how his tactics have affected us locally and nationally.