Bush lost by such a margin that even Atwater couldn't have saved him. Besides, Atwater's trademark character assassination and race-baiting tactics wouldn't work as well: Clinton's adultery was suspected at the time, but not nearly as widely known as it is now, and Clinton had ordered the execution of a mentally handicapped black man while he was governor of Arkansas.
Nah, it was Bush's unwillingness to start his campaign that killed him. As late as the fall of 1991 he still had no desire and limited staff to start up his re-election campaign.
A living Atwater might have talked him into starting up early—and Atwater was a master of the negative, not just the points you lay out, negatives work against anybody.
Even if Atwater survived his cancer, he probably wouldn't use his older, nastier tricks. His illness "woke him up" and he went around apologizing to everyone he ever wronged.
That gave me an interesting idea for a scenario--Atwater survives his cancer but refuses to use his dirty campaign tricks and ends up being fired.
Not exactly. Atwater's apology wasn't for
using negative attacks, it was for the hurt he did to Dukakis (see
All's Fair In Love and War, and I might have the details wrong but Atwater was certainly not apologizing for his negative attacks) and the media were far more eager to twist it around to "badboy apologizes for being mean to Dukakis".
He'd still do it again.