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If applied simply and clearly, that kind of message usually works.
When Bobby Knight was on his last chance at Indiana, for example, the admin did placate the lynch mob by telling them Knight had signed a "no more chances" agreement with the University.  (He did later take ahold of a kid's elbow and get fired.)
It's a very powerful device.  What are you supposed to counter with, if you're part of the mob?  You can yell "he shouldn't even be getting this chance" but that makes for a very poor bumper sticker.  The counter is not sound-byte-able.
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Not that Baker's articles are simplistic; they're not.  But a CROWD listens in very simple chunks. 
Bush lied, kids died, the message has to be that simple to direct a mob.  I don't know that you can counter "Zero Tolerance From Here" on a bumper-sticker level.