A good surrogate is hard to find. Just recall Bill Clinton's "fairy tale," Samantha Power's "monster" and Phil Gramm's "nation of whiners."
Every few weeks, another surrogate is thrown under the bus, or at least dropped off at the next stop, for saying something ill-advised, off-message or just plain dumb.
"The traditional use of a surrogate was to add some third-party validation to a campaign's message, but these days, just as often they're simply used to feed the massive media machine," said Republican consultant Todd Harris, who worked for Fred Thompson's presidential campaign.
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