The Atwater Index

Lee Atwater may not have been the biggest turd ever to rise so high in politics but it's hard to imagine anyone with more, overall pernicious influence. I hereby propose the creation of the Atwater Index of Perniciousness, or AIP, a linear-scale measure of terrible effects, with Newts and Bushes and DeLays and Ryans prominent on the inaugural list. 

Actual destructive output relies on more than moral degradation. Opportunity, ambition and social and administrative skills also play a part and the availability of a pool of subservient evil-doers, like James O'Keefe, Tucker Eskew, Grover Norquist and other such unelected underlings. Who knows what Lee might have achieved had he not died so young. 

Atwater himself never ran for office or was elected but he was the pioneering formosan termite of American politics, head of a hoard of hidden munching machines in the walls and foundations of our democracy. Now, due to Lee and his like, we all live with this apparently ineradicable menace gnawing away at us as in an epic horror or disaster movie.