No. I rather did a Sarah Palin angle.
I don't know which influence he really had on the creative direction. But he didn't improve Jarretts role as a headbooker like many hoped when he was hired away from Puerto Rico in the first place,
nor was he the saviour of the KO division (when he took over a few months after the reboot, the KO division became WORSE for the first time, even though he DID do a better job than the people after him ... this terrible Taylor Wilde run happened on his watch, though),
nor was TNA -E-V-E-R- on the right way of creating, elevating, etc. their home grown talent. Like eyebrowmorroco said, the whole "respect" storyline was a disastre. It only elevated the WWE guys and made new TNA watchers think, AJ, Joe, Daniels, etc. are just mid carders, who will never be as good as WWE talent. In the big picture the storyline was worse than ANYTHING stupid Vince Russo has ever done in TNA and WCW.
Hence, I'm not a fan of Mantell and generally critical towards all these pro wrestling "expertes" on the inside, who influenced TNA without any accomplishment.