Comments on replacing Trippi on TAPPED

TAPPED: PERFECT STORM HITS BURLINGTON Neel's hiring reflects Gore's influence in the campaign. The former vice president has spoken to Dean several times since Iowa and helped to convince him to give Neel a higher profile. Gore has been critical of Trippi in these conversations, according to sources.

No word yet on whether or not Steve McMahon, Trippi's partner at Trippi, McMahon & Squier, and Dean's media advisor, will stay on. But the campaign source said, "There's no one more politically inept I've ever seen than Steve McMahon," and blamed him for the campaign's terrible ads in Iowa.

According to Marc Ambinder, the former Dean embed at ABCNews.com, the relationship between Trippi and Dean soured after Iowa, where only around a third of the voters the campaign promised Dean showed up at caucus sites.

HOWARD'S END? None of this has to do with Trippi. Tactically and strategically, Trippi ran a brilliant campaign. He turned Dean from a dark horse into a frontrunner, and in doing so, changed politics forever, whether or not Dean wins. And it's especially odd that Dean would hire Neel as a replacement. Neel, a former Gore aide, is a classic K Street Democrat, a Beltway insider with a thriving career lobbying for the telecom industry. Those of Dean's hard-core supporters who aren't disillusioned by Trippi's firing will probably will be by Neel's hiring. More to the point, Neel's one of the guys who was in charge of Gore's lackluster 2004 campaign.

I find it interesting that while Dean has the gumption to do something decisive (if stupid) like firing Trippi, Wesley Clark seems to lack the wherewithal to something decisive (and probably smart) like firing some of the guys on his own campaign.