Winners & Losers

By RICHARD LACAYO; JOEL STEIN

The '04 Campaign will be remembered as the one in which the parties didn't run the whole party. There were many weeks this year when the traditional G.O.P. and Democratic campaign operations--for that matter, even the candidates themselves--seemed less important than the swarming field of outside players who gave this election season its unusual intensity. Bloggers, 527s, get-out-the-vote teams--these are the people who made the campaign a free-for-all, in the best and the worst senses of the phrase. The candidates churned out position papers that not many people read. But Michael Moore made a movie that a lot of people saw. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made an ad campaign--a lot of people saw that too. Al Franken pulled up to the microphone. Ann Coulter took up near permanent residence in front of the TV cameras. Now George W. Bush gets four more years. Do the rest of them get four more as well? The people on these pages had a significant impact on Campaign '04. We asked them to tell us how, and to talk about how they plan to party on.

WINNER | ANN COULTER

The Mouth That Roared

Ann Coulter has made her name by speaking her mind--loudly, brashly and always from the right. Not everyone always appreciates what she says. Her column on the Democratic Convention--which she described as attended by "corn-fed, no makeup, natural fiber, no-bra-needing, sandal- wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call 'women'"--caused USA Today to drop her from its pages. But it's precisely that kind of tart talk that has turned Coulter's books, including her most recent, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), into best sellers and made her a popular pundit on the political-talk-show circuit. Her mission, she says, was "to energize the liberal base because every time one of them opens their mouth, George W. Bush is even more popular with the American people."

She's delighted that his popularity--and her advocacy--has been reconfirmed with four more years in the White House. "A [John] Kerry presidency would have been better for business," Coulter, 42, admits. But Bush is going to "increase the number of books I can write by reducing my chances of being killed by Islamic terrorists."

LOSER | MICHAEL MOORE

The Wrong End of the Lens

The October surprise came in June. Has there ever been a campaign development quite like Fahrenheit 9/11? Everyone had heard of campaign books, but suddenly we all woke up to the election-season power of a shrewdly timed ... documentary. Michael Moore's bumper car of a movie crashed into Bush from all angles while attracting the kind of box-office gross (U.S. numbers: $119 million) that usually goes to Adam Sandler pictures.

Shortly after his film opened, Moore took his father to get coffee at a doughnut store in Flint, Mich. "We're going through the drive-through window," he recalls, "and a girl, about 23, said, 'I just saw your film. I voted for Bush in the last election, but I just can't do it this time because he didn't turn out to be who he said he was.'" As it happens, there weren't enough of those doughnut girls to elect Kerry. But Moore, 50, has other projects in the works. His next film is a documentary about the U.S. health-care system. Tentative title: Sicko.

WINNER | JOHN O'NEILL

Mission Accomplished

If the Vietnam War seemed, at times, to have almost as large a presence in the campaign as the war in Iraq, it may be, at least in part, because of John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer and former swift-boat commander whose feud with Kerry dates back more than 30 years. The first time O'Neill's anger at Kerry surfaced was in 1971, when the fellow naval officers debated the Vietnam War on The Dick Cavett Show, with Kerry speaking out against the war and O'Neill defending it. This time out, O'Neill, 58, and the group he helped organize, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, ran TV ads accusing Kerry of embellishing his war record, receiving undeserved medals and besmirching Vietnam vets. When the charges went unanswered for too long by the Kerry campaign and a book, Unfit for Command, co-authored by O'Neill, became a best seller, Kerry's poll numbers dropped visibly.

Having helped defeat his longtime rival, O'Neill says he will go back to private life. His share of the profits from Unfit for Command will be used to aid veterans and military families in need. But beyond that, O'Neill says, "I look forward to again being the Rip Van Winkle of politics."

LOSER | GEORGE SOROS

Lacking the Midas Touch

George Soros is what people mean by the word moneyman. The Hungarian-born investor has a fortune estimated at $7.2 billion. He has been among the world's largest philanthropists, giving away some $4 billion over the decades. But after 9/11 he turned his attention--and his checkbook--to U.S. politics. Soros, 74, says he was unnerved by such Bush Administration rhetoric as Attorney General John Ashcroft's claim that people who raised concerns that the Patriot Act was a threat to liberty were aiding terrorists. Before Campaign '04 was over, Soros had become one of the largest political contributors in U.S. history, spending about $27 million, most of it channeled to the independent partisan groups called 527s--all of it aimed against Bush. As it turned out, all was for naught. So, what does Soros do now? "I think I go into a monastery," he jokes. "I need to regroup." Then he adds pointedly, "But one doesn't want to stay in a monastery forever."

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."

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. And when the President was forming his position on stem-cell research, Land helped persuade Bush 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.

LOSER | AL FRANKEN

The Laughs Came Hard

This is not where Al Franken's career looked like 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 elite 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 | 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 that 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."

REPORTED BY BARBARA KIVIAT, BARBARA MADDUX, CAROLINA A. MIRANDA AND KATE NOVACK

With reporting by BARBARA KIVIAT; BARBARA MADDUX; CAROLINA A. MIRANDA; KATE NOVACK