Whenever a client complains to me about getting the Al Diamon treatment (and sooner or later everyone gets the Al Diamon treatment – the man respects nothing and no one), I always counsel the same thing: who cares? The man is a joke, a cartoon, an aging, overweight, beer-swilling cynical curmudgeon who hasn’t had a decent political insight in 30 years. He’s good for a few laughs, but does anyone really take him seriously? I mean, just look at him. His wife once confessed to me that even she doesn’t know what he looks like without that ratty Rip Van Winkle beard. I think she also told me the last time he combed it, 25 Rheingold beer caps fell to the floor. (I wonder if she also knows that he’s bald under that baseball hat?)

Here’s why Al’s smart-alecky barbs are so easy to dismiss: he’s an equal opportunity antagonist. If you disagree with the latest acid assessment from his hovel in Carrabassett Valley, don’t worry. There will be another one coming along any minute that you probably will agree with. To Al, everybody and everything is just a punch line.

So I had to remember my own counsel this week when Al took yet another shot at me in his column. I’ve been the subject of his columns at least dozen times, some kind of record I suppose. That’s another thing about Al. When he doesn’t really have anything to say (which is often) he just recycles his previous brain farts and heads to happy hour.

Some days he likes me. Some days he doesn’t. Some days I’m a genius. Some days I’m scum. Whatever, Al.

You really have to question why newspapers even publish his erratic scrawls except maybe next to the Sudoku puzzle as an alternative form of entertainment. It’s obviously not because of his keen political insights or analysis (he predicted last year that the governor’s race would be between Steve Abbott and Steve Rowe – not even close), or adherence to anything close to reliable information or facts.

Anyway, his latest column shows that the man is seriously slipping. He’s become like the very writers and reporters he routinely condemns, and I can’t ignore it.

This time he took after to me for what he claims is my loss of credibility. (Now remember, this comes just a few months after he wrote, “Bailey possesses a wealth of experience (reporter, as well as press secretary for a congressman, governor, and numerous candidates) and institutional memory that shouldn’t be dismissed.” See what I mean?) As evidence that my credibility is shot, he cites a few recent political campaigns that I was involved in that didn’t succeed, and my involvement with the Cutler Files (which he sometimes defends and sometimes doesn’t – depends on how many beers he’s had, I guess).

But he hinges his column mostly on a recent press release by a new anti-casino group that included some jabs at me and blames CasinosNO! for the loss of referendums in Lewiston, Biddeford and the statewide vote for the Oxford casino. Al quotes the release verbatim and uses it as evidence for his key point – that my loss of credibility is having an obvious result: “Some people who….had been relying on Bailey for political advice began to edge ever so casually toward the door. Whether it was his entanglement with the Cutler smear or his inability to beat the Oxford casino, his former allies were looking to distance themselves from Bailey.”

THE WIN/LOSS RATIO: Diamon makes the same mistake a lot of political reporters make – evaluating a political consultant’s effectiveness by his or her win/loss ratio, the number of successful campaigns the consultant has been involved in vs. the number that didn’t succeed.

That’s OK. I’ll match my win/loss ratio with any consultant working anywhere. But it’s an unfair and misleading criteria.

What Diamon and others don’t get is that political campaigns are the sum of their parts. Guys like me get way too much credit when a campaign wins, and too much blame when it loses.

To win, you need a good candidate, a good message, a boatload of money, great ads, good mail, good field, positive press, on and on, and it all has to work.

Most of all, you need good timing, which is rarely in anyone’s control.

Case in point: nearly any of the Democratic contenders for governor last year would have been a stronger candidate in the general election than Libby Mitchell. Don’t get me wrong, I like Libby. But given the anti-government, anti-incumbent mood, her timing was off. Unfortunately, Democratic Primary voters didn’t see it that way and awarded her the nomination based mostly on her long-time allegiance to the party. But to the general electorate, Libby was a relic of the past. So is her loss Jesse Connolly’s fault? Hardly.

Democratic Primary voters have a habit of doing this. I was communications director for Tom Allen in 1994 when he ran against Joe Brennan for governor. Allen was a good candidate; we had enough money, good ads, a great team. But there was just nothing we could do to beat Brennan in the Primary. And we threw everything at him. He was a mountain, unmovable, with solid built-in support from Primary voters. Would Allen have been a stronger candidate in the race against Angus King and Susan Collins? I think so. Much of King’s campaign hinged on the past (Brennan) vs. the future (King). It wouldn’t have worked if the Democratic opponent had been another fresh face like Allen. (Angus ran a great campaign, but one of the often overlooked factors in his victory was the collapse of Susan Collins' campaign - something nobody could have planned or predicted.)

Same with Ethan Strimling when he ran in the Democratic Primary for Congress. In any other race, in almost any other year, Ethan would have been a very strong contender. But Pingree, having run previously in a statewide race for the US Senate, was just too strong, and had been doing the necessary spadework for years. The party faithful felt it was her turn, her time.

As for last year’s Oxford County casino campaign, we did everything we could. We were outspent more than 10-1 in the middle of the worst recession in my lifetime, when the other side pounded the jobs message and, unlike past casino campaigns, actually stayed on it. And even then we almost pulled it off, coming within just a few thousand votes of winning.

I suppose there are campaign consultants who only take on sure things, but I’ve never been one of them. In some cases, I’ve looked the candidates in the eye on the day they asked me to join their campaigns and said, “You do know that you’re probably not going to win, right?” They hired me anyway. Some candidates run just so they can grow their name recognition for a future race. Others come to me after the race full of regret that they didn’t listen to the advice I gave them.

I’m very proud of all the campaigns I’ve been associated with and make no apologies. I worked my ass off on all of them and did all we could under the circumstances. I can’t think of anything we would have done different (except maybe have more money).

Yes, winning is a lot more fun than losing, but if you play this game long enough, you’re going to lose, often, for all kinds of reasons. There isn’t a campaign consultant anywhere with a perfect record. And the truth is, I learn more from the losses than the victories.