Who is David Carmen, you ask? According to lobbying registration papers filed in July 1999, he's the CEO of Carmen Group Inc., the official lobbying organization for historically black Dillard University. Ironically, the Carmen Group is also the same public relations shop responsible for the infamous 1988 Willie Horton TV ad produced for the National Security Political Action Committee and its Americans for Bush arm -- both independent advocacy groups. The crossing of paths had some Democrats in D.C. worked into a froth -- Bush and the Willie Horton folks at the same event? A-ha!

But according to Bush spokesman Ray Sullivan, the Texas governor visited Dillard not because of Carmen, but as an acknowledgement of Bush media guru Mark MacKinnon's longstanding friendship with Dillard president Michael Lomax, on whose 1993 Atlanta mayoral run MacKinnon worked.

"Mark MacKinnon and Dr. Lomax have been talking for more than a year about getting the governor to Dillard," Sullivan says.

Dillard University's vice president for institutional advancement and development, Love Collins III, who worked with the Bush campaign on the event, confirms that Lomax assigned him the task, and that Carmen was only there because his firm "has done right by us in the last couple years."

Likewise, it bears mentioning that neither Carmen nor the National Security PAC -- nor, even, Americans for Bush -- had any direct ties to the 1988 presidential campaign of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.

But the Willie Horton controversy looms large in American politics, as evidenced by the fact that you won't find the creators of the ad affiliated in any way with the campaign of its beneficiary's son, George W. Bush.

Depending on your point of view, Bush is either too savvy, too principled or too inclusive for that. But if Bush has consciously distanced himself from the Horton team, it's also probably wise.

In many ways, the legend of the Horton ad far exceeds its reality -- a reality that may be even more pernicious in some ways. Because, though the elder Bush and Lee Atwater received blame (or credit) for the Horton ad, according to the official books, they had absolutely nothing to do with it.

To recap: "Weekend Passes" was produced by Carmen, and was broadcast in the fall of 1988. It featured the story of Horton, a convicted murderer granted a weekend prison furlough under then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis during which Horton escaped to Maryland and assaulted a man, Clifford Barnes, and repeatedly raped Barnes' wife, Angie. While then-Sen. Al Gore, who was a conservative Democrat and presidential candidate at the time, slammed Dukakis for his role in the Horton fiasco during the primaries, neither he, nor the original ad, mentioned Horton's race.

But almost immediately after it began running, as a Brown University study of the ad revealed, GOP consultant Larry McCarthy, who worked for National Security PAC, stealthily inserted a looming mug shot of Horton in a substitute version of the ad, revealing the convict to be -- ta da! -- an African-American. McCarthy said the photo of Horton used in the ad was "every suburban mother's greatest fear."

"Weekend Passes" meshed well with an official Bush campaign ad, "Revolving Doors" -- another spot critical of prison furlough programs. Produced by Bush media consultant Roger Ailes -- a former boss of McCarthy's -- with a helping hand from Atwater, the ad also portrayed Dukakis as soft on crime. But the official campaign ad never mentioned Horton's name; and, of the 19 "prisoners" making their way through the "revolving door" of the Massachusetts penal system, 16 were white, two black and one Latino.

Meanwhile, another independent, pro-Bush group, Committee for the Presidency, funded a $2 million speaking tour headlined by Clifford Barnes and Donna Fournier Cuomo, the sister of Horton's original murder victim, around the country. The Committee for the Presidency, formed by a Los Angeles GOP consultant with -- again -- no direct or provable ties to the Bush campaign, also broadcast two ads, one with Barnes claiming that "Mike Dukakis and Willie Horton changed our lives forever," the other with Cuomo saying that "Dukakis let killers out of prison ... Willie Horton stabbed my teenage brother 19 times." Though there was no evidence of any collusion between any of these independent groups and the Bush campaign, Atwater had told GOP officials, "By the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name."

They succeeded in that goal, though the Horton ad soon became notorious for, in the words of Annenberg School of Communications Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson, creating "a black face for crime."

It succeeded, largely by incessant repetition by the television news. And though Federal Election Commission complaints alleging collusion between the Bush campaign and the team responsible for the Horton ad went nowhere, then-President Bush himself defended the spot in July 1991, after then-Sen. Bill Bradley accused the president of using "the Willie Horton ad to divide white and black voters and appeal to fear."

"The point on Willie Horton was not Willie Horton himself," Bush said. "The point was, do you believe in a furlough program that releases people from jail so they can go out and rape, pillage and plunder again? That's what the issue was."

Salon News A Salon-eye view of the day's news, with investigative reports, analysis and interviews with newsmakers.