Joe Trippi Interviewed

MikeCapone writes "Mother Jones and Alternet interviewed Joe Trippi,the guy behind the Howard Dean campaign ('the candidate lost but the campaign won'). He has a new book out, 'The Revolution will not be Televised' (click for excerpt), about how the Internet is radically changing the way politics is done. Choice quote from the interview: 'The open-source stuff was amazing. I mean, 650,000 brains are a lot smarter than the 50 [...] They spotted stuff that we didn't see, came up with ideas we wouldn't have thought of, and made the campaign a lot stronger. Just like how open-source works in running software -- it's the difference between Linux and Microsoft.'"

Comments

'the candidate lost but the campaign won'

[Otter]

It's funny -- I was just talking with someone about the conflict of interest between candidates and campaign managers. Theoretically, the campaign manager's goal is the candidate's victory -- in reality, his long term prospects depend as much on how his campaign is perceived than on how the candidate eventually fares. So, for example, Kerry may have been the winner of the 2004 primaries but the only thing anyone will remember is Joe Trippi and blogs and the cult-ish atmosphere the Dean campaign constructed.

It's interesting to see Trippi himself say it so nakedly. Of course, I don't see him talking about the other big conflict of interest: the millions of dollars in advertising kickbacks he walked off with.