Political messaging must be a pretty sweet gig if you can really brag that "I have won about 70 major elections around the world, including many presidents, and I devised the simple message for Tony Blair in his last successful campaign: ‘Forward, Not Back.’" Sure, Mark Penn, you may look good now (well, you actually aren't looking too good right now, come to think of it), but you've never had to run against me and my battle-tested "better, not worse," slogan. And don't even make me go nuclear. I've got my "good stuff, not bad stuff" signs just waiting for some poor sucker who pissed me off. Meanwhile, to be a bit more analytical about this, message consultants are not generally the most important variable in a given race. So if you're the sort of consultant who gets hired by overwhelming favorites, you're going to look pretty good without having had to win very much. Joe Trippi, for instance, isn't terribly good at winning presidential races, but he seems to be pretty good at helping insurgents define the races they're in. But maybe he'd seem really good at helping frontrunners win if more of them hired him and he happened to be on their payroll when they won. Who knows!?
