South Carolina already had the reputation as a key forum for dirty campaign tricks before 2000. It was, after all, the home of Lee Atwater. But 2000, with its variety of smears distributed by push polls, faxes, fliers, and emails, cemented it.
But you got South Carolina all wrong, Tucker Eskew, George W. Bush’s campaign spokesman in 2000, wants you to know. In this interview shot for the forthcoming documentary on Atwater, Boogie Man, Eskew, an Atwater protege, objects to the idea that racist smears work there:
It’s “an insult” and “unfair to suggest that a state like South Carolina is a bunch of rubes because of our past,” he says. So why would the Bush campaign have gotten involved in something like that? The McCain illegitimate black baby smear was “just some crazy rumor that some one person may have spread.” And as for the impact, maybe “a few hundred people” may have been affected — a “few rubes.” Certainly not the payoff that a campaign genius like Karl Rove (another Atwater protege) would waste time with.
From the necessarily spotty reporting on what really happened in 2000, however, it’s apparent that the rubes were out in force that year, distributing fliers about McCain’s “Negro child” and running phone banks to push that and other rumors. So far, this election seems very tame by comparison.