“I felt something stirring in American society. It was a sense among the people of the country–Republicans and Democrats alike–that something was missing from their lives, something crucial. I was trying to position the Republican Party to take advantage of it. But I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘it’ was. My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood.” Lee Atwater then went on to call on the leaders of the country to “speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”

We don’t much like Atwater and I, for one, am suspicious of life’s-end confessions, but then along comes a living conscience, a true statesman, maybe a lone voice in the political desert, Mark McKinnon, John McCain’s chief advertising strategist, who made good on his word to quit rather than to plot a campaign against Barack Obama. He said of Barack, “I think he has a deep character and good judgment. I also think he’s wrong on some fundamental issues. But I believe he is honest and independent.”

No one knows that Mark will do, but if I were NBC, I’d hire him and make him the conscience of the campaign, the guardian of Lee Atwater’s last wish.