The architect of today's "anything goes" campaign style was a southerner by the name of Lee Atwater. A mentor and close friend of young Karl Rove and then young George W. Bush, Atwater, young, brash, personable and devoid of restraint when it came to winning campaigns, began the Republican strategy in the south in the early '70s. By the time 1988 rolled around, Atwater had amassed an amazing 28-4 campaign win (Rove's from 1986 is 34-7) and earned himself a top berth on the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, where he was credited with the turn-around campaign ad against then Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. It featured "Willie Horton," a fierce, African-American man who had been granted prison parole from one of Massachusetts' state prisons and had committed a rape.

Atwater sensed early in his political career that people were more motivated to vote from their anger and fears than their hopes and dreams. Termed the "Darth Vader of Republican politics," Atwater frequently used deep-seated racial fears and divides to get out the vote. Nor was he averse to using "plants" in the audience who would rise with a question that was bound to make his opponent look unfit for public service. Another tactic Atwater invented was called "push polling." These were fake surveys distributed against opponents to convince people of all manner of distortions and lies.

Fate was to put an end to Atwater's career when he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain cancer at the age of 40. When he learned of his impending death, he was filled with remorse and began apologizing to the people he had harmed. Repentant and dying, Atwater wrote in Life Magazine in 1991, "My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood."

If Atwater died regretting his campaign tactics, it apparently effected no change of heart in his friend and successor Karl Rove, who by the time of Atwater's death, had risen to a high rung on the Republican success ladder.

Rove first met Atwater in 1973 when Rove was running for National Republican College President and Atwater, the Republican Regional Coordinator, came down to run his campaign. They became good friends, crisscrossing the country together and sharing ideas for campaign strategy. Both of them managed to avoid the Vietnam draft at its height in the early '70s.

Rove's early life and beginning campaigns were fraught with troublesome questions beginning with the Atwater-led campaign, where Rove was attacked by his own Republican opponent in an article in the Washington Post, accusing Rove of teaching young volunteers dirty campaign tactics. When he was 19, he was involved in an Illinois campaign in which he used a false identity to enter Democrat Treasurer Alan Dixon's office where he stole campaign letterhead, which he later distributed to rock concerts and homeless shelters promoting free beer and women.

Karl Rove has an unfortunate family history. The man he was raised to believe was his father divorced his mother in 1969. The mother later committed suicide and Rove was to learn that another man, whom he did not meet until he was 30, was his real father.

A fateful meeting took place in 1993 when Rove was then special assistant to the Republican National Committee. Bush elder asked Rove to deliver a set of car keys to his son. Just home from Harvard, George W. and the man who was later to catapult him to the presidency had never met. Here is how Rove remembers the fateful meeting: "Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma, you know? Wow."

Since that fateful day, it's been a long journey for Rove with the man who calls him "Turdblossom." One wonders if the memory of Atwater still lingers. Did he lift a glass to his old mentor and teacher when he "swiftboated" John Kerry?

There was a time in American history when candidates appealed to our hopes and dreams rather than our fears and prejudices, our divisions and hates. As long as winning is achieved through the kind of tactics that Atwater and Rove have honed to perfection, don't expect to see a change.

(Hinkle lives in Napa.)