BROOKE GLADSTONE: Four years ago, former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, known there as "Goni," eeked out a narrow re-election victory. It was due in part to the behind-the-scenes work of a group of Washington-based Democratic Party pollsters that included Tad Devine and James Carville. But it was a short-lived victory. Hardly were the votes counted before angry protesters took to the streets to denounce Goni's agenda. Dozens were killed in the ensuing violence, and a mere 14 months into his term, Goni fled to the U.S. It's a story documented in the new film "Our Brand is Crisis," now making its way around the country. In this case, the outcome was, to say the least, unfortunate. But consultants from the north are hard at work throughout Latin America, and they're glad to be there. Just ask Mark Feierstein, one of the consultants who worked for Goni.

MARK FEIERSTEIN: We've worked in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Panama. We're currently working in Venezuela and in Nicaragua and Honduras. It's probably better to ask where we have not worked.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How do you go about selecting the candidates you work for?

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Well, we work for Democratic Party candidates in the United States. And when we go overseas, we're looking for clients that embrace, you know, the values of the Democratic Party. These are people in Latin America, for example, who are committed to fighting corruption, people who support the free market but believe that the free market needs to operate in a social context so that people gain as an economy grows overall. And that makes us unusual, to be honest, because there are many firms that, when they go overseas, tend to be less selective.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so, have you ever turned down any interested clients?

MARK FEIERSTEIN: We turn down interested clients quite frequently.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you ever attempt wholesale makeovers? Do you make policy suggestions? Or is it a question of just tweaking what the candidate's already got?

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Mostly it's working with what the candidate has. In most cases, the client has a particular philosophy, a particular agenda, and we're trying to help that client communicate that agenda and that philosophy with the electorate.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: At least, judging from the film, though, you -

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: - do establish a theme for the candidate, and it might be a theme that the candidate himself or herself has never thought of. [FILM CLIP]

TAD DEVINE: The frame for us is, you know, crisis. [CHUCKLES] I mean, we must be – that's our brand, as Stan was saying the other day. We must own crisis and we must brand crisis - who can deal with it, who has the capacity to deal with it, and Goni as the guy who has strength, you know, in the plan. [END FILM CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's obviously from the film. That's your associate, Tad Devine.

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Right. That's Tad Devine, one of the best in the business. I mean, look, that message is consistent with who Goni – it's consistent with his background - someone who had created jobs, someone who had stabilized the economy. As a result of his success as Minister of the Economy, he was elected the first time. You know, we are proud of the role that we played in electing Goni, but the idea that consultants made Goni is, I think, erroneous.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How about negative campaigning? In the film, we see a member of your consulting team, an Israeli guy named Tal Silberstein -

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

BROOKE GLADSTONE: - telling Goni it's time to go negative against his opponent Manfred Reyes Villa.

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Here's a bit of that tape. [VIDEO CLIP] TAL SILBERSTEIN: We have to make him from clean to a dirty candidate. That's our task. I had a discussion with Carlos Sanchez about it. Very personal. He has some stuff on him.

MAN: Mm. TAL SILBERSTEIN: He's going to do it through outside parties that are going to attack, and it's not going to come from us - at least that he's going to try, start to feel the pressure. So I thought in everything you do, it cannot be connected to us in any way. [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Well, that's pretty bare-knuckled. Is that what - [OVERTALK]

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

BROOKE GLADSTONE: - actually goes on, and does it work?

MARK FEIERSTEIN: You know, obviously there was one particular candidate there who had a history of corruption in his background, and that is something the voters were educated about throughout the course of the campaign. I think that's important. But the notion that foreign consultants were introducing the concept of negative campaigning would be erroneous. Campaigns tend to be much dirtier without the U.S. consultants, I think.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You think so?

MARK FEIERSTEIN: No question, yeah.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, I have to assume that much of your experience of how campaigns work was gained through testing and honing of techniques north of the border, and I just wonder how these techniques differ north and south.

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Well first, there is a view that emotion is more important in Latin America. Having said that, I think it could be taken too far. I think some people tend to run campaigns that are empty of substance and they don't give enough credit to voters. We often find, when we go overseas, that our local research partner often prefers not to do research, prefers not to do focus groups among poorer voters. The sense is that they can't articulate themselves in the same way that upper class voters can. And we disagree with that strongly. You know, we've worked in some of the poorest countries in the world, for example, Cambodia. And we did focus groups in rural areas there, and we found people quite sophisticated in terms of their assessments of political parties, of candidates, of agendas.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mexican President Vicente Fox, back in 2000, his American campaign consultants assumed Spanish-sounding names as they moved around the country, so it didn't get found out. Do you ever do that in your campaigns?

MARK FEIERSTEIN: No. No one has ever called me Marcos.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS]

MARK FEIERSTEIN: No. Look, we've never seen a voter that cared about who the consultant was for a particular candidate, a particular campaign. In fact, you know, some of the candidates who are most anti-American are the first ones to sign up American consultants. Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, is a good example. I mean, he engages in verbal confrontation with the United States on a daily basis, but he has American advisors. You know, again, it's an understanding that consultants in the United States tend to have extensive experience, extensive expertise, and we can perhaps, you know, raise the level of the campaigns we operate in. I mean, if the consultants were to disappear altogether, I don't think the character of the campaigns would change very much. You'd still have candidates and parties doing focus groups, doing polls, doing 30-second ads. That's just the nature of campaigning in the 21st century.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mark, thank you very much.

MARK FEIERSTEIN: Thank you very much.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mark Feierstein is an associate vice-president in charge of Latin American campaigns at the Washington consulting firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.