BLAME The War Room. The Academy Award-nominated documentary on the 1992 Clinton campaign made stars of the staff after he withdrew his co-operation.
Not that anyone bothered about that detail. Within a couple of years Clinton's lead strategist, James Carville, was doing American Express ads.
When a sharp young politician called Tony Blair emerged as a contender for the top job in British politics he wrapped himself in the Clinton mantle.
His staffers got the star treatment too -- and none more so than his director of communications, Alastair Campbell.
Conference organisers like to get a big name. That's one of the reasons Campbell is addressing the Public Relations Institute of Australia convention in Fremantle next month.
Another reason is that he has no Australian equivalent. Why?
"You have a far more dominant culture of the spokesperson being in the public eye in Britain and the US," Ian Smith says.
Smith is a former media adviser to the Kennett government who now runs his own company, Bespoke Approach.
He says the Westminster lobby system -- the unattributable briefings given to the media by the British prime minister's spokespeople -- gave Campbell prominence.
"It's accepted that the likes of Campbell have been sanctioned with a role outside the leader's office," he says, pointing to the very different approach in Australia.
"There is almost a jealousy factor in the eyes of some politicians if they see their leader's staff taking too much of a prominent role."
Smith believes Australian politicians could learn from Britain and the US. "Someone as hard-pressed for time as Kevin Rudd doesn't need to do all these press conferences. Malcolm Turnbull doesn't need to do all these press conference. It seems bizarre in the extreme when a Campbell or (former White House spokesman) Ari Fleischer can come out and take that mantle on. It's exactly the same message as you're going to be getting from the leaders."
Noel Turnbull, a former political adviser and PR giant and now adjunct professor in applied communications at RMIT University, also believes the lobby system gave Campbell his fame.
He points to the similar profiles enjoyed by Margaret Thatcher's press secretary, Bernard Ingham, and before him Harold Wilson's media adviser, Joe Haines.
Turnbull says Australia has generated celebrity lobbyists, people like former Bob Carr adviser Bruce Hawker, John Howard adviser Grahame Morris and, before them, Andrew Peacock and Nick Greiner staffer Ian Kortlang, but notes they all achieved prominence after leaving politics.
"In the general run of things they're less significant than a competent first assistant secretary at a department."
David Spears, Sky News political editor and host of its current affairs program Agenda, says his regular guests Hawker and Morris have an important message to share.
"People are interested to hear what the strategists, what the backroom people think about events as the way they see issues and events is different to the way journalists see events and different to the way the public sees them," he says. "Bruce Hawker is valuable for the Labor Party because he can prosecute their argument very effectively but from a position where he is not directly accountable to the leader. That gives him that arm's-length distance where he can point out critically where the message can be refined and where Labor can actually be doing a better job.
"That's why we're interested in hearing from him, because he can be critical of his own side, and similarly with Grahame Morris."
