jessie benton is a totally incompetent moron who history will remember as costing us our democracy. shame on ron paul for not firing him.
No, I would say only a small amount of shame or responsibility should attach to Jesse Benton himself, and that to the point that he
should have realized he was inadequate to the task at hand and then either learned HOW to do it properly ASAP, or stepped aside.
But it takes a REALLY mature person to understand and then act on something like that, and the simple fact is that he is just a very young and inexperienced person -- one who should NOT have been put in such a position to begin with.
However, I think his very inexperience also allowed him too easily to NOT see this. And unfortunately, he had a ready "justification" or "scapegoat" near at hand: the
"MSM has a conspiracy against the campaign" meme that was pushed by BOTH the grassroots (many of whom see a bogeyman in every shadow, and a conspiracy behind every corner) AND by the campaign leadership who really SHOULD know better, but who (as Libertarians often seem to) fell once again into that "victim mentality" trap all too easily.
BUT, majority of the responsibility (and therefor SHAME) belongs on the campaign staff leadership for NOT understanding (in even the vaguest sense) the importance of having a professional, high-quality public relations and media relations director (or firm) as a campaign staffer/resource, and thus not providing more experienced help or replacements for Mr. Benton.
And I would say the same of Jon Bydlak -- who did some very admirable work in setting up the online system and yet failed to understand other aspects of more-traditional fund-raising efforts (not meaning "corporate" or "lobbyist" donations, but rather techniques for rewarding "bundlers" etc. as a way of getting people to help involve their friends, family and others in the campaign donation process.
While, as I said, he did an admirable job of getting the online system going (and I am fairly certain was key in getting the campaign to be "open" and "transparent" with it's online reciepts -- laying the VITAL necessary underlying groundwork for the real-time graphs and the subsequent money-bombs; both TRUE innovations in fundraising) -- the campaign staff SHOULD have brought in someone (even just on a consulting/training basis) to assist in getting those other things done.