The Outside Players

Wednesday, Nov. 03, 2004 By RICHARD LACAYO AND JOEL STEIN

Michael Moore, lefty gadfly; Ann Coulter, Jeanne D'Arc of the right

GREGORY HEISLER FOR TIME; SHONNA VALESKA FOR TIME

Article Tools

Reprints

Sphere

RSS

(2 of 2)

WINNER | MATT DANIELS
Matrimonial Bliss
Matt Daniels has almost no chance of accomplishing his goal, but pursuing it has made him a player. He's the guy who wrote the Federal Marriage Amendment, which opposes gay marriages. After successfully blocking a more radical version of the amendment that would have outlawed gay civil unions—and risked alienating moderate voters—Daniels' Alliance for Marriage won Bush's support with language that simply defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Although clearly happy that the President was re-elected, Daniels, 40, says he's glad the election is finally over so people will stop seeing his amendment as nothing more than a political wedge issue. "There are those who constantly allege that our fundamental motivation is some sort of campaign agenda," he says. "Well, they're not going to be able to say that anymore."

LOSER | AL FRANKEN
The Laughs Came Hard
This is not where Al Franken's career looked as if it was headed in the '90s, when his Stuart Smalley character was poking fun at support-group therapists on Saturday Night Live. Instead, Franken, 53, has become one of the most involved political comedians in history. Back when Kerry looked as if he was going to lose the nomination to Howard Dean, Franken not only organized a buffet lunch in his Manhattan apartment for the Senator to meet New York's media élite but also grappled with a heckling Dean supporter at a Kerry rally in New Hampshire. His right-ripping book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them was No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, and last December, he signed up as the host of a show on the new left-wing radio network Air America. One of the few comedians able to make his angry rants funny, he has become bigger than even Stuart Smalley would have dared encourage him to be. With four more years of Bush ahead, Franken promises that his next book will be even harsher. "This guy is really the worst we've ever had," he says.

WINNER | BRIAN MCCABE
Mastering the Right Spin
It's usually the negative ads that draw attention in a presidential campaign. But the 60-sec. spot that made news in October centered on an emotional embrace between the President and an Ohio teen whose mother died in the 9/11 attacks. But "Ashley's Story," as it is known, wasn't sponsored by the Bush campaign. It was paid for by the Progress for America Voter Fund. "The picture of President Bush hugging Ashley Faulkner reminds people so much about what they liked about the President after Sept. 11," says Brian McCabe, 36, who heads up the organization. "It really gets at his character and compassion." Progress for America raised more than $50 million and devoted $14.2 million of it, the biggest TV ad buy in election history, to run the Ashley spot in 10 key states. Now that he has helped re-elect the President, McCabe will continue to promote his conservative agenda. "Whenever debate seems to be breaking through on something, then we will be there," he says.

WINNER | RICHARD LAND
A Spiritual Influence
As director of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land has enjoyed a long and close relationship with the born-again Bush. Perhaps never more so than when the President was forming his position on stem-cell research. Land helped convince the President to prohibit new embryos from being used in the research. "It was a very involved and lengthy process," says Land. "And I was very pleased with the outcome."

He's equally pleased with the outcome of the election. "I think most Southern Baptists believe, as the President does, that America has a special role to play in spreading freedom and human dignity around the world," he says. And Land, 57, who will continue pushing a pro-life, anti-gay-marriage agenda, will have a special role to play in the White House.

LOSERS | WES BOYD AND JOAN BLADES
Stuck in the Slow Lane
Wes Boyd, 44, and Joan Blades, 48, a husband-and-wife team of software entrepreneurs, started MoveOn in 1998 as a petition drive urging Congress to censure President Clinton and then "move on." In the 2000 election they promoted candidates for Congress to replace those members who had been supporters of impeachment. By the time of campaign '04, their website had become a symbol of the new power of the Internet in national politics—a cyberspace headquarters of anti-Bush sentiment and a powerful online fund-raising tool, with some 2.8 million members. Backed with millions of grass-roots dollars, MoveOn took to the airwaves with one Bush-bashing TV ad after another—but to no avail.

How will they contend with the second Bush term? "We'll get out there on issues like media consolidation and campaign-finance reform," says Boyd. Judicial nominations will also be a major issue. "Our real influence is in getting citizens engaged," says Blades. "Looking at new voters being registered, it makes me feel very optimistic that the system is becoming vibrant again."

LOSER | RICHARD CLARKE
No Longer an Insider
For most of his years in Washington, though he served in high positions in the State Department under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and then as counter-terrorism chief for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Richard Clarke could move around the city unrecognized. That ended last March with the publication of Against All Enemies, his highly critical insider account of the Bush White House after 9/11, and an appearance on 60 Minutes in which he insisted that terrorism had not been a top priority for the Bush team before the attacks.

Just three days later, in his appearance before the independent commission investigating 9/11, Clarke issued a dramatic apology to the families of the victims, who he said had been failed by their government. All in all, it was a media explosion that put the White House seriously on the defensive at the very moment when the war in Iraq was bogging down. "I was able to say, for the first time, what many people had already figured out," says Clarke. "The occupation of Iraq was actually making the war on terrorism worse."

Note to George W. Bush: in your next term, expect Clarke, 54, to go on offering plenty of unsought council. "Through newspaper columns and books and congressional testimony," he says, "there are lots of places where I can give advice." Does he care that there's no chance of a job offer from the White House? "I did 30 years of hard labor in the Federal Government. That's all we can ask of anybody."