Do You Want You Marriage Counselor to Be Happily Married for 30 Years or Struggling Through His 4th Marriage?

There's an old saying that you learn from making mistakes and failuring more than from succeeding. I think we all basically agree with that but does it follow that you learn better from other people's failures than their successes? People who have advice columns and who are in the business of helping people are people with experience who have ultimately experience success but is their road to success generally more or less curvy than normal or ideal?
This morning on the radio, Kid Kraddick and company were talking about how big name celebrities who get in trouble with the law, mostly doing drugs, wind up eventually speaking to kids as a role model as part of restoring their image and supposedly getting back on the right track themselves. I think this discussion got started with TI being arrested yesterday and Paris Hilton last week on possession of marijuana and cocaine. They likely will end up being some sort of spokesperson for some anti-drug organization and be an example of what not to do.

Anyway, I'm not so much concerned with them in particular or people in drug rehab but for the more common person seeking guidance in relationships or careers, is it generally better for the counselor to be someone who found success right away or someone who stumbled and mis-stepped and had several setbacks before being successful. I have no idea who writes the dear Abby columns or whether marriage counselors are people with more or less relationship success than the average person, but I think that would be something interesting to find out. I kind of think someone who had been married a few times, has a few kids, and now finally is in a good marriage would make the best counselor because he's experienced more and can more likely identify with the patient. Likewise, are career counselors mostly people who made it through college on schedule and found jobs relatively easily or are they more likely to be people who changed majors several times, took 6 years to get a bachelor's degree, struggled to find a suitable job, possibly changed jobs a lot before finding their niche?
One part of me thinks publicity for wrong-doings should be minimized - that making a headline out of people being arrested for drug abuse gives other messed up people the idea that they can be famous if they do something dumb. We should publicize the people for doing things well - the 6:00 news should contain all positive stories rather than the way it is not with 90% of the news including someone getting arrested. Another part of me thinks that showing these people and their ensuing punishment might make an example of them and help people learn lessons without having to make the mistake themselves. At least, with some it will help improve the spectator's self-esteem by seeing someone who is even more screwed up. But people are hard-headed - they're still going to have to make some mistakes themselves, often several times, before getting on a good track.