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Showing posts from February 28, 2016

What We Can Learn from a Regretful Bully

Lee Atwater was the infamous Republican strategist for both President Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Atwater made a career of dirty politics using highly effective but dishonorable skills to distort the positions of political opponents, smear their character, and basically humiliate and decimate them. He was not shy either about using racial and ethnic slurs and innuendos. Brash and often offensive he reveled in the political battles he created. At the height of his political career he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. A year later at age 40 he would be dead. The powerhouse bully, the supposedly brilliant political tactician, the guy who was feared by Democrats as well as Republicans, was reduced to the limits of a body and mind broken and dying. In the last months of his life he dropped all of the sneering hate and crippling abuse he had dished out to opponents. Humbled by the awareness of his own humanity and the stark reality of how fragile and momentary life can b