The Power of Two
And what happens when it’s unleashed on the Web. Meet the two guys behind the Draft Wesley Clark site
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By Michael Hastings
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Sept. 18 — Josh Margulies received the e-mail from his brother-in-law on April 9. The message listed the new political campaigns with which his wife’s brother, John Hlinko, was involved. Hlinko, a political consultant and a registered Democrat, had started DraftWesleyClark.com.
MARGULIES, A REPUBLICAN, was shocked. “We had never agreed on a single candidate,” he says. “But I told him I had started my own [Web site]: Republicans for Clark.”
Amazingly, the two relatives had entered the draft movement independently and without each others’ knowledge. Being family, they joined forces to get Clark in the race. Seven months later, Clark did just that. In his formal announcement yesterday, Clark thanked the efforts of the Draft Clark movement, saying “You took an unconceivable idea and made it conceivable.”
If the Internet is the darling narrative of the 2004 campaign, Hlinko and Margulies may turn out to be this year’s darlings of the Net. Margulies, a 33-year-old lawyer from New York, had no question about the power of the Web—he had met his wife on Match.com two years ago. Hlinko, 36, has made a career out of innovative campaign strategies and saw the Internet as the perfect source for volunteers, campaign contributions and organization. (Incidentally, Hlinko met his fiancée on Match.com as well.) Since April, the duo have made more than 150 media appearances on Clark’s behalf; they opened up a headquarters in Washington, signed up tens of thousands volunteers and helped secure about $1.5 million in pledges. Part Martin and Lewis (Hlinko has the tendency to say things like, “Yes, I would agree that Josh is stupid,” before launching into intricacies of electoral votes), part Evans and Novak (Margulies worked for Bush’s 2000 campaign), Josh and John spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Michael Hastings via conference call from Little Rock, Ark.
NEWSWEEK: So, it’s been seven months. Are you guys sick of each other yet?
Josh Margulies: It’s way past that. It’s pretty much plotting each others deaths.
John Hlinko: We’re sick of each other, then we get well again, than we get sick again. I think it’s terminal.
At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor now that the fun is over
and the race officially begins.
Hlinko: We’ve lost our money, we’ve lost our health, we’ve lost everything else, but the humor stays.
Margulies: The women, the careers, the self respect.
My point exactly.
Margulies: Here’s the one serious thing. The race didn’t just begin. The race ended. This is a story about American politics. This a draft campaign. We won. For real, I’m not just saying that. Yes, OK, there’s a presidential campaign going on, but presidential campaigns happen every four years in America come hell or high water. There’s nothing unusual about that, and sometimes there are amazing candidates. But what’s really different here, is what started as an idea that John kicked around at dinner with a couple other people ended up in a rally with hundreds, maybe a thousand people, a Web cast that went out to hundreds of thousands of people, cameras from all over the world and a media cycle that is completely revolving around a guy who really didn’t even intend to run in the first place. Truly, that’s the story. I don’t say that in the spirit of immodesty, because it wasn’t just us, but it started with John then with me and with a couple other people. And it grew to be tens of thousands of other people. What it says about American democracy is unreal.
How do you mean?
Margulies: Here was the high stakes game that we realized was afoot a couple weeks ago. If General Clark had said no, then the next time somebody went to draft some highly qualified individual, everyone in the media, all of you would be saying, “Yeah, but the last time they did this, 2004, remember they tried to draft Clark, they did the TV ads, the radio ads, all over the place and they still couldn’t do it.” Instead, what’s going to happen now is that every single year people are going to announce for president, and any time people aren’t satisfied with the group that they’ve got from which to choose, somebody is going to say “What about the time they drafted Clark? Let’s do that with whoever.”
Hlinko: That’s what Moveon.org did with Internet activism in general. It made it relevant. It wasn’t “We have an e-mail petition, look at our e-mail!” No, they actually galvanized hundreds thousands of people, raised millions of dollars. I think now you’re seeing that with the draft. Why do the American people have to wait until the election day to chose their candidate? They can choose them beforehand. That’s what I think this movement has shown, and regardless of what happens in the election, that will be the most important outcome of this.
Margulies: Well, I think it would be the second most. If we become rich and famous that would be the most important outcome.
Hlinko: Sure, hell yes, totally.
Has the Internet come into its own in politics?
Hlinko: It’s definitely come to that point. Let’s face it. If somebody tried to do this in 1996, there would have been 17 guys in Palo Alto, saying “Yeah, draft him!” and that would have been all well and good. But the fact is now, not only has Internet penetration reached a [high] level of percentage of Americans using it, you have another percentage of America. You have the depth and breadth of America. So it’s no longer concentrated upper-middle-class white people. It’s reached out beyond that.
Where do you guys go from here?
Margulies: Looks like 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
OK, what role do you hope play as Clark’s campaign moves forward?
Hlinko: We’d love to have some kind of position. The reality is, in the one respect we feel like we won our battle, the draft is over and that’s great. You know, I’m thrilled. If we can help the general, if it’s the right fit, if it makes sense. We want this man to become president—it’s no secret.
Margulies: One thing that this has shown, as we talk about the Internet, the permeation of it, the penetration of it, is that it doesn’t stop in the draft campaign. This wasn’t just a group of online people who wanted General Clark to run. I carry around in a laptop briefcase handwritten letters from retired couples, in shaky handwriting. They’ve sent in checks of $5 or $10 dollars, and they say, “General Clark, you are the only hope for this country.” It wasn’t online for them.
When we spoke over the summer, you guys still hadn’t received a pay check. How about it?
Hlinko: I tell you, my landlord is getting pretty tired of it.
Is Howard Dean the next target?
Margulies: The conventional wisdom is that you always focus laserlike on the primary election until you win the nomination. Then you switch your focus to whatever candidate you need to beat in the general election. But even though that’s the conventional wisdom, even though it probably should be the wisdom of this campaign with now 10 candidates, I bet you the world quickly begins to view this as a race for the White House between Clark and Bush. General Clark in his announcement today made it clear he’s in this to run against President Bush.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc. |
