The boy off the bus
: GQ has a long and timely (thanks to the Internet) profile of Joe Trippi. Jim Treacher sends it to me, wondering whether it reveals he is an ass or the perfect subject for another West Wing — “Not that the two are mutually exclusive, I guess…”
I don’t know what to make of reports that Trippi pocketed 15 percent of Dean’s ad buy. (Has that been verified? Where did the report start? What do other campaign managers do? Anybody have the facts on this?)
It’s also too soon to know whether Trippi will be seen as the genius who changed politics forever (likely) … or the fool who wasted all of The People’s money to lose Iowa and New Hampshire and frontrunnerdom (possible) … or the victim of a bad candidate (likely). I won’t be surprised to see Dean and the Deany Babies (wasn’t that a ’60s beach band?) trying to blame Trippi.
If I were Trippi, Zach Rosen, Zephyr Teachout, Matt Gross (who’s not visble on the blog, by the way), the minute the Dean Campaign sputters to a stop, I’d set up a consulting shop to tell politicians and companies how to exploit this new bottom-up world (see below). Rather than taking the Carville path of punditry, why not make a fortune? It matter whether they were right or wrong; doesn’t matter whether Trippi is an ass; they’d make a mint.
