At one point Winfrey awkwardly reminisced with the group about how none of them were ever able to beat her ratings.

"One of the things that we are all proud of, our team, is that we've been on for 25 years, we've been the number one talk show for 25 years … but there were a few days when some of you actually beat us in the ratings and i hear you guys remember those days?" Winfrey asked. 

"I remember one of them," Rivera said. 

Raphael said she "never once" managed to top Oprah's ratings. 

"We just wanted to be you, have your money, live your life," joked Raphael.

Winfrey mostly just laughed and laughed.  

Tomorrow's episode of the "Oprah Winfrey Show" will feature appearances from Ricki Lake, Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Montel Williams. This much nineties nostalgia and daytime talk power has never before been assembled in the same place, at the same time. Sadly, Maury Povich will not be coming to give paternity tests to his fellow daytime hosts.

In November, Oprah announced that she would be leaving daytime after 25 years to focus on her cable television network. The Oprah Winfrey Network launches January 1, 2011.

They both had the same basic goal that President Obama had in mind when he took a seat on Jay Leno's Tonight Show couch last night.

But the evolution in political messaging that resulted in Obama becoming the first sitting president ever to appear on a late night talk show really kicked into gear in 1992, when Bill Clinton saw a perfect opportunity in late-night and daytime talk shows—previously considered beneath the dignity of a president or a would-be president—to bypass the traditional news media and to showcase his warmth, empathy and other compelling human traits.

Nineteen ninety-two was also that year that Ross Perot, previously a little-known Texas billionaire, used a February appearance on Larry King Live to incite a grass-roots fervor that, by June, had him running in first place in a three-way presidential race with Clinton and George H. W. Bush. The approach had a similar effect on Clinton, who emerged in April '92 from a bloody Democratic primary process, his standing with general-election voters undermined by a string of scandals. Even Democrats believed he wouldn't be electable in the fall. But as the spring wore on and voters began to see him in nontraditional settings, Clinton's numbers began to improve.

Meanwhile, Bush stubbornly resisted making playing the same game; to do so, he believed, would be to lower himself. After Clinton and Perot both appeared (separately) on Phil Donahue's syndicated daytime show, Bush told reporters that he would reject the program's invitation "because I'm the president." (Clinton also had appeared on Donahue for a one-hour primary debate with his Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown.)

Bush's obstinacy played right into the Clinton and Perot messages, which painted the incumbent president as a tired and walled-off symbol of the old ways. This contrast came to a head in early June, when Clinton appeared on Arsenio Hall's syndicated late-night talk show. Instead of just sitting down and chatting, Clinton first grabbed a saxophone and donned a pair of sunglasses (handed to him by an aide on his way out to the stage) to join Hall's in-house band for a rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel." The image, replayed endlessly on television for days to come, reinforced the hip and vigorous image Clinton was trying to create.

This positive press prompted the White House, finally, to announce that Bush himself had reconsidered and would "probably do the same kind of media as the other candidates," as spokesman Marlin Fitzwater put it. Asked by a reporter if Bush would also go on Arsenio, Fitzwater replied: "'With that exception."

Whoops. This prompted a weeklong war of words between Hall and the White House. On his show the next night, Hall responded directly: ''Excuse me, George Herbert, irregular-heart-beating, read-my-lying-lipping, slipping-in-the-polls, do-nothing, deficit-raising, make-less-money-than-Millie-the-White-House-dog-last-year, Quayle-loving, sushi-puking Bush. I don't remember inviting your ass to my show. I don't need you on my show. My ratings are higher than yours.''

Bush himself refused to return fire, but top Republicans complained to the higher-ups behind Hall's show. Instead of backing down, he upped the ante a few nights later: "I got 'dissed' by the president. At least I'm in good company, though. Now I've joined the ranks of the homeless, the unemployed and the middle class. So I don't feel so bad. . . . Maybe he'll do Donahue, when the topic is 'relatives of people involved in savings and loan scandals'. . . . So I guess that's two houses he won't be in: my house, and come November, he won't be in the White House."

The Bush-Hall showdown ended there, but the damage had been done for the White House. Instead of simply relenting and doing a few talk show appearances, Bush—through Fitzwater—had sparked a media firestorm that reinforced for millions the stubborn old fuddy-duddy image that the Clinton campaign was peddling. Eventually, Bush did appear on a few network morning shows, for "town hall" events. But by then, it didn't matter.

At one point, Mr. Cooper asked Ms. Yellin about the allegations in the book that the national media was "too deferential to the White House," during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

"Did the press corps drop the ball?" asked Mr. Cooper.

Cue the controversy.

"I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning," said Ms. Yellin. "When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings."

"And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives—and I was not at this network at the time—but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president," she added.

Mr. Cooper was surprised. "You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?" he asked.

"Not in that exact—they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions," she answered. "They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience."

Afterward, the exchange ricocheted around the Internet.

Prior to joining CNN, Ms. Yellin worked at ABC News and MSNBC. At which network, observers wondered, had executives pressured her to do positive stories about the president?

Today, on a CNN blog, Ms. Yellin responded to the uproar.

So ABC News is off the hook.

MSNBC execs? Not so much.

Over at the Politico, former Media Mobster Michael Calderone caught up with former MSNBC anchor Phil Donahue, whose prime-time show was canceled in 2003. For years, Mr. Donahue has alleged that MSNBC got rid of his show because he was too critical of the administration at a time when the president's approval ratings were still high.

"The board members of the large megamedia companies, while America is waving the flag and supporting the president, do not want their cable or television channels to be occupied by dissent, protest, all the rights that have been fought for and died for in past wars," Mr. Donahue told Politico.

The co-stars of the literally-named film Martian Child, Amanda Peet and John Cusack, were supposed to have arrived at 5:45 for their snaps, but even at 7:00 they were still on the wet road. Spirits remained high, though, and by the time Ms. Peet showed up, a good old fashioned buzz filled the room.

Ms. Peet, shockingly lovely and delicate in person, gamely made her way down the line, wearing a leopard-print patterned dress and open-toed shoes -- that didn't look wet at all! But after she passed the flashbulbs she flopped, exhausted looking, on a nearby bench and pulled out her cell phone, not looking particularly pleased as the gaggle of publicists around her kept her up to date on Mr. Cusack's progress. Apparently Mr. Cusack's car was trapped in the same miserable traffic as everyone else's (Stars! They're Just Like Us!).

"Ten minutes," a harried-looking girl assured Ms. Peet. "He just has to stop by the hotel and change his clothes." Before Mr. Cusack could show, though, another distinguished gent arrived. Phil Donahue! "Oh my god, is that really Phil Donahue?" asked one of Ms. Peet's companions, neck craning. In case anyone wondered, Mr. Donahue looks fantastic, and his voice, still recognizable after all these years, simply booms. Mr. Donahue was at the festival to promote Body of War, an Iraq documentary that he co-wrote and co-directed, with the help of money (and music!) from Eddie Vedder, and Sean Penn as well.

Ms. Peet looked unimpressed with the scrum around Mr. Donahue, but when the shockingly-tall Mr. Cusack did arrive, she kindled and took back her place on the red carpet to flash her megawatt grin.

In past years, the Hamptons Film Festival's Friday night is filled with mellow celebrity-filled parties. Due to weather and traffic stress, however, by 10:30 East Hampton looked like any other beach town in October, slick empty roads and deserted restaurants and bars. The scene apparently was at Nick & Toni's, where New Line was celebrating Martian Child. But a mellower crowd congregated at the Hampton Bowl, where old-school publicity man Jeremy Walker threw a midnight bowling party. There was a strobe light, Def Leppard on the stereo and many pitchers of beer. But not-so-much star power (save for Jamie Johnson, director of Born Rich, who stuck to bowling over socializing). Phil Donahue didn't show -- apparently he was pissed off at the weather causing the evening's screenings to be anemic.

When the day broke it was sunny and the fall colors were peaking, and by 11:15 people were already buzzing around the theater. Chris Eigeman's Turn the River was screening, and star Famke Janssen, in low-slung tan slacks and a peasant blouse, was hanging around with her little dog, looking effortlessly hot. Alec Baldwin was taking in a showing of I Am Animal, a documentary about PETA (is he a veg, too?) and tickets traffic in and out of the theater seemed to be picking up.

He offered a mock warning to his fellow film producers in the studio. “Now watch what you say,” said Mr. Donahue. “We have a member of the mainstream media in our presence.”

These days, the godfather of daytime television is no longer a card-carrying member of the club. Ever since February of 2003, when MSNBC cancelled his nightly talk show, Mr. Donahue has been wandering through the outskirts of the American media. Recently, he has settled into an unlikely role: a TV icon turned freelancing filmmaker.

“What can I get you to drink,” said Mr. Donahue. “A shot and a beer?”

Mr. Donahue was in from Connecticut for the afternoon to put the final touches on his first feature-length documentary, Body of War. Mr. Donahue recently described the movie as a “non-nuanced, anti–Iraq War documentary,” about a “heartland kid who suddenly went from a social life of single bars and courtship to a daily routine of catheters, puke pans and erectile dysfunction.”

“Little Miss Sunshine, we are not,” said Mr. Donahue.

So far, Mr. Donahue doesn’t have a distributor for the film, which he has financed with his own money. He hopes to begin showing Body of War at film festivals by the end of the summer. The market for Iraq documentaries, said Mr. Donahue, was growing more crowded by the day, but he felt confident that his would stand out. “There are no tanks in this movie,” said Mr. Donahue. “No Humvees. Nothing that goes BOOM.”

“This is Baby Jessica in the well in Texas,” said Mr. Donahue.

Body of War focuses narrowly on the physical and political struggles of Tomas Young, an injured veteran adjusting to life in a wheelchair. Mr. Young, a freckle-faced twentysomething native of Kansas City, Mo., joined the Army a few days after Sept. 11. He had expected to fight in Afghanistan. Instead, he went to Iraq. On his fifth day in combat, he was patrolling Sadr City when a shot ripped through him.

Mr. Donahue reached out to demonstrate. “The bullet entered here,” said Mr. Donahue, tapping a reporter near the left clavicle. “It exited, here, in the T4 vertebrae of the spine.”

“Now he’s paralyzed from the nipples down.”

Mr. Donahue said his inspiration for the film was a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a cloud of napalm. “See the pain,” said Mr. Donahue. “Don’t sanitize this war.”

The film features two original songs, written and performed by Eddie Vedder, the front man of Pearl Jam. Mr. Donahue explained that he and Mr. Vedder first met in 2000, when they were both campaigning for Ralph Nader. Their paths crossed again in the spring of 2007, in Scottsdale, Ariz., at a Chicago Cubs fantasy camp.

“I said, ‘Eddie, I’m doing an anti–Iraq War documentary,” said Mr. Donahue. “He said, ‘You want a song?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding?’”

“Wait until you hear the sound in this place,” said Mr. Donahue.

The screen flickered. Mr. Vedder’s voice filled the room.

Nothing’s too good for a veteran,

Yeh, this is what they say,

So nothing is what they will get,

In this new American way.

For the next half hour, Mr. Donahue showed clips of his unfinished film. Along the way, Mr. Young was shown struggling to pull his pants over his unfeeling legs; his fiancée appeared onscreen trying to figure out how to get Mr. Young through their wedding day without accidentally soiling his tuxedo; and a wheelchair-bound Vietnam Vet was seen advising Mr. Young on Viagra.

“There’s a lot of what you might call ‘guy talk’ in the film,” said Mr. Donahue. There is also plenty of stirring footage. In a particularly mesmerizing sequence, Mr. Young watches stoically as his younger brother, fresh out of boot camp, ships off to Iraq.

To judge by the preview, Mr. Donahue has eschewed much of the genre’s perfunctory Bush-bashing and, instead, has aimed the camera on the members of Congress who voted to authorize the war.

One person who does not appear in the movie is Mr. Donahue. During the course of the film, the man who made his career in front of the camera decided to stay behind it. “I didn’t want to upstage Tomas,” said Mr. Donahue. “And I don’t want to look like a guy out there tap-dancing his feet when we have 3,500 guys dead.”

A week later, Mr. Donahue called The Observer from his hotel room at the Peninsula on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was in Beverly Hills to present an award at the Daytime Emmys and to meet with film distributors.

“I’m showing it to some biggies here this week,” said Mr. Donahue. “We’ll see. At this point, it’s still just a dream.”

The dream began years ago with a visit to Ralph Nader. Sometime around the winter of 2004, Mr. Nader had received an invitation to see an injured soldier at the Walter Reed hospital in Washington, D.C. Mr. Nader asked Mr. Donahue to tag along.

At the hospital, Mr. Donahue met Mr. Young for the first time. He was bedridden, paralyzed, groggy from morphine and engaged to be married. Mr. Donahue was floored.

“Jesus, the kid couldn’t walk,” recalled Mr. Donahue. “I couldn’t just pat him on the head and walk away. I thought, ‘O.K., Mr. Retired Guy, what the hell can I do?’”

He decided to write a book.

But before he could begin putting pen to paper, he had to fly to St. Louis to attend the second annual National Conference on Media Reform. There, a few thousand media-watchdog types were gathering to critique the shortcomings of the corporate media. It was a subject close to Mr. Donahue’s heart.

A few years earlier, Mr. Donahue had joined MSNBC to host a nightly talk-show program that would compete with The O’Reilly Factor on Fox. At the time, the nation was preparing for war. “Everybody was go, go, go, bomb, bomb, bomb,” recalled Mr. Donahue. “I thought, ‘Well, people will watch my show because I’m different.’”

The experiment was short lived. In February of 2003, NBC Universal executives replaced Mr. Donahue’s show for an extra hour of Countdown: Iraq. They attributed the move to lackluster ratings. Afterward, somebody leaked an internal NBC study to AllYourTV.com, which noted that Mr. Donahue “seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives,” and, as such, presents a “difficult public face” for the network in a time of war.

In May of 2005, still getting over what he describes as his “short miserable life at MSNBC,” Mr. Donahue traveled to the media-reform conference.

On the eve of the gathering, the conference’s organizer, Robert McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), spent a day walking around downtown St. Louis with Mr. Donahue. They were besieged by fans. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr. McChesney recalled recently. “It was like walking around with Elvis.”

Within the conference halls, Mr. Donahue received a similarly warm reception. “Suddenly he’s around 2,500 people who all really share his concern about what’s happening with the media and the coverage of the war in Iraq,” said Mr. McChesney. “You’re not alone. It’s not hopeless.”

Afterward, a rejuvenated Mr. Donahue decided to scrap the book. “I thought, ‘What the hell am I talking book here?’” said Mr. Donahue. “I’ve spent my life in television. Let’s do a movie.”

On the plane ride home, Mr. Donahue happened to sit next to DeeDee Halleck, a pioneer of independent media. She gave Mr. Donahue the digits for Ellen Spiro and Karen Bernstein, a team of documentary filmmakers who ran an outfit called Mobilus Media in Austin, Tex.

“And here we are two years later,” said Mr. Donahue.

Reached by phone last week, Ms. Spiro said that she had enjoyed working with Mr. Donahue despite their vastly different media pedigrees. She said that when Mr. Donahue first called her out of the blue, she thought it was a prank. “It was sort of like getting a call from Pippi Longstocking,” said Ms. Spiro.

Over the course of making Body of War, Ms. Spiro came to appreciate many of Mr. Donahue’s quirks, including his fascination with C-SPAN.

“It’s his favorite channel,” said Ms. Spiro. “It’s a revealing channel because there is no mediator. It’s the opposite of what’s on cable television. Phil watched hundreds of hours of material having to do with the war. He was obsessed with the C-SPAN footage. If you watch enough, it becomes an exposé.”

Ms. Spiro believed that the process of making the film had been a catharsis for Mr. Donahue. “I think that Phil was a victim of the Bush administration’s manipulation of the media in the build up to the war,” said Ms. Spiro. “Most people would have gotten angry and fought. But he went inside himself and decided to do something positive. Creativity can be a great healing process.”

Back in his hotel room, Mr. Donahue agreed. Making the film had been a good way to channel his discontent. “For me, it’s very interesting to see how fast we got into this war and how agonizingly slow is our effort to get out,” said Mr. Donahue.

He seemed content to be on the outside of the mainstream media looking in. “You still can’t say that we’re losing,” said Mr. Donahue. “Just ask Harry Reid. You can’t say that our soldiers have died in vain. You can’t criticize the war because if you do, you’re demoralizing the troops. You can’t show flag-draped coffins.”

For the time being, Mr. Donahue is free to say whatever he wants. All he has to do is find a distributor and an audience. “It’s been quite an adventure,” said Mr. Donahue, before getting off the phone. “This is not for sissies, this game.”

"People around here call me Little O'Reilly," said the 6-foot-4, 220-pound Mr. Scarborough, referring to controversial right-wing personality Bill O'Reilly, host of Fox's The O'Reilly Factor . "People have always said that I'm 'Little O'Reilly' and 'O'Reilly Lite'-I have absolutely, positively no interest in going there. I will succeed or fail, whatever that is, if I'm myself."

Mr. Scarborough was wearing a J. Crew jacket, Gap khakis and Stan Smiths. Although he's more moderate than Mr. O'Reilly and many Republicans, he had a consistent "pro-life" voting record in Congress and shares in the current right-wing euphoria over the war in Iraq.

"I am the hawk's hawk," he said. "I believe the President was right in Iraq, and I think he's right to be threatening Syria. Of course, I don't think he'd ever go into Syria, but it is certainly good to be waving the bloody club."

Joe Scarborough got on television quicker than most people get a haircut. In February, he was living in Pensacola, Fla., and working as a plaintiffs' attorney, a career he took up after serving from 1994 to 2001 in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now, he wakes up at 5 a.m. at the Essex House in Manhattan, reads the papers, makes some calls and starts planning the show. At 11 a.m., he heads to the Brooklyn Diner, then heads across the Hudson to MSNBC and prepares Scarborough Country for the live 10 p.m. broadcast. He gets back to the hotel at 11:30 p.m., watches Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel, and always ends up on PBS. On Fridays, he flies back to Florida to be with his family.

It all began last December, while he was appearing on MSNBC's Hardball . As a Congressman, he had been a frequent guest on the show, and now he was calling for the head of Trent Lott, after the then Speaker made his infamous remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. An MSNBC producer spoke to Mr. Scarborough through his earpiece: "Joe, do you want to do a TV show?"

He said why not and met with MSNBC.

"The message I delivered was that Fox isn't No. 1 because they've got the best talent," he said. "Even though O'Reilly is great TV-I think he and Larry King are the two real pros on cable TV-I said, 'It's not talent; it's not that they produce the shows better than you guys. It's that they're conservative . It's ideology and ideology alone. And unfortunately Donahue might be great TV, but 98 percent of the people who watch cable news are conservatives or moderates, and they don't share Phil Donahue's viewpoint. They don't share Ashleigh Banfield's viewpoint. They don't share the viewpoint of a lot of people you've been putting on prime time.'"

A week later, he was offered a three-year contract. Now he's looking for an apartment. "But, you know, for the price of a studio apartment in Chelsea or a two-bedroom where I would feel safe leaving my pregnant wife and my two boys," he said, "I could buy a mansion on the Gulf of Mexico. It's outrageous."

He said he wants his show to counterbalance the liberal bias in the media.

"Obviously, Fox is conservative," he said. "If I can help tip the scales at MSNBC, which is currently more down the middle, I think that's a victory." He said he was very aware that Donahue lasted only six months and that CNN had recently pulled the plug on Connie Chung.

"It's so much like politics, so much like Washington, D.C., it's not even funny," he said. However, he added, "There was so much hate and vitriol in politics, and for the most part that seems to be missing here."

He told MSNBC that he could do better over time by being polite and trying to make sure his guests left with a smile.

"I reminded them that before the era of O'Reilly, the No. 1 cable news guy was Larry King," he said. "Who interviewed Connie Francis and Don Rickles and the like for years. I don't think you have to come out brandishing your sword and telling everybody, 'Agree with me or else you're spinning .' There's sort of a condescending tone with some of the other shows."

Confrontation can distress him. Every time things have heated up with a guest, Mr. Scarborough has gone to a commercial break thinking he's failed.

"Everybody will say, 'Oh, no, no, that's great TV-people love that,'" he said. "I just don't think they do, over time. I really don't."

Perhaps the hottest things have gotten was when Mr. Scarborough raised the issue of a controversial comment Mr. O'Reilly was recently reported to have made at an inner-city fund-raiser he was M.C.'ing. (Referring to a group of students who were late, Mr. O'Reilly had said, "I hope they're not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps.") Mr. Scarborough brought this up with a guest, The Washington Post 's Lloyd Grove, who had reported the O'Reilly comment. For just mentioning the incident, Mr. Scarborough felt heat from the right.

"Right now, Congress and TV land are a lot alike," said Mr. Scarborough. "Right now, O'Reilly is what Newt Gingrich was in 1995. Everybody's scared of him. I'm getting e-mails now from people saying, 'How dare you cross Fox? How dare you bring anything up? You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Fox!' I know I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Fox. But if somebody else made a statement like that, you think Bill O'Reilly would sit back and say nothing about it?"

Mr. Scarborough said he greatly admired Mr. O'Reilly's achievement, and admitted there were some "generational differences" between the two men.

"I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Stones and the Grateful Dead," he said. "Of course, I was in college in the 80's, so R.E.M., Elvis Costello-stuff like that. It's just a culturally different viewpoint."

Not that people haven't already gotten them confused. On his April 16 broadcast, Mr. Scarborough's guest was Republican Congressman Dan Burton, who began by saying, "Hey, Bill, how are you?", and then launched into his spiel.

Mr. Scarborough stopped him.

"Well, first of all, let's get it straight," said Mr. Scarborough, looking pretty irked. "My name's not Bill. My name's Joe, Dan."

"I'm sorry, Joe," said Mr. Burton.

"Don't even say that's a Freudian slip."

"Forgive me, forgive me," Mr. Burton said.

That cleared up, they proceeded to enumerate Bill Clinton's foreign-policy failures.

I told Mr. Scarborough that he comes across as less self-righteous than Mr. O'Reilly.

"May I be struck down if anybody calls me self-righteous," he said. "It's been my pet peeve. I have viewpoints, and I believe strongly in them and I want to fight for them, but God help me if I ever tell somebody that they're wrong or evil or un-American."

He said that when scripts for Scarborough Country veer into that territory, he says to the writers, "O.K., let's pull it back a little, cowboy."

Mr. Scarborough was raised Baptist in the South-Georgia, Mississippi-and then upstate New York. His father was an industrial engineer at Lockheed Martin, and his mother was a music teacher and church organist. He played guitar and sang for a band called the Basement Boys (named by his mother). At 15, the family moved to Florida, where he was quarterback of the Pensacola Catholic High football team. At the University of Alabama, he majored in history and pledged a fraternity-an enthusiasm which lasted a month.

"I'm just too independent," he said. "I didn't like rednecks getting drunk at 3 in the morning and throwing whiskey bottles from the third floor and telling me to sweep it up. Just not my nature."

He played in a rock band, wrote a conservative column for the school paper and ran for student-body president on a platform of abolishing the student government, trying to take down the University of Alabama "machine" which had given everyone in Alabama politics their start, including Jefferson Davis and George Wallace.

"They were very arrogant and pompous," he said. "They were the fat white pink boys who now go around in starched white shirts in Washington with the suspenders."

Mr. Scarborough lost, but it was a moot point: He was running as a senior and so could not have taken office anyway. "This is all very much in line with my very predictable personality," he said.

He married his first wife, Melanie, a teacher from Pensacola, when he was 23; coached high-school football for a few years; wrote and produced a satirical musical about televangelists called The Gospel According to Esther ; and then attended law school at the University of Florida. In 1994, when he was 30, he decided to run for Congress after becoming frustrated with Bill Clinton.

"I was one of those guys who had a visceral dislike for him," Mr. Scarborough said. "Every time I watched him on TV, I'd be going, 'He's lying!' And finally, after Somalia and the tax increase and his first two years, which were just absolutely a nightmare politically, I jumped in and ran."

He didn't know anyone in politics, he said, and his family wasn't wealthy, but he proved popular in Northwest Florida, a conservative district with several military bases, a region which has at times been called the Redneck Riviera.

"I just worked hard and got lucky and got elected," he said.

He ran against Bill Clinton's tax increases, and in favor of a stronger military and a balanced budget. He lifted his campaign slogan, "Retake America," from the Tim Robbins movie Bob Roberts .

(There is one actor Mr. Scarborough cannot stomach these days. "There's something deeply offensive about Ed Norton going to the Berlin Film Festival saying he's ashamed of America," he said. "And one of my favorite movies-another thing that O'Reilly probably would not say-is Fight Club . I just loved Fight Club ! Get the DVD, one of the best DVD's ever! But I just can't watch the guy now.")

In Washington, he said, he acquired a reputation for being "very, very conservative" when it came to the economy and national defense, and "pretty green" when it came to the environment. His Republican pals in Congress called him "Squish" for that, and for his moderate attitude on human-rights issues in Tibet and Sudan.

Mr. Scarborough was part of the cabal that conspired to get rid of Newt Gingrich in 1997. "He was a lightning rod," said Mr. Scarborough. "He's a very, very bright man, but just so many self-inflicted wounds."

But even with the drama of a coup attempt, life in Washington wasn't much fun.

"I ran against the imperial Congress, and then when I got up there, I was disappointed at just how unimperial it was," Mr. Scarborough said. "It was hard work. I mean, if you wanted to do your job right, you worked from 7 in the morning until 11 at night. You do that three and half days a week, and the second that the last vote was over, you'd rush out to your car, run to the airport, fly home-but the second you got on the airplane, people would start talking to you about things they needed help on, and obviously you were glad to help them. Then you'd get home, you'd try to see your family and be with your kids, but then you'd do town-hall meetings. Again, if you do it right, it's a tough, tough job-especially in the House, where you're running every two years. Now, the Senate is the House of Lords; that's the best gig in town."

Still, he made an impression as a TV-friendly conservative. "I can't tell you how many people came up to me when I was in Congress and told me, 'I love watching you on TV. Most conservatives don't know how to articulate their feelings on TV without coming across being rabid dogs,'" he said.

Mr. Scarborough made his own fun in Washington, playing in a band called Regular Joe. And he got to know the Bushes: He became good friends with Governor Jeb Bush, and during the 2000 Presidential campaign, he made hundreds of TV appearances as a spokesman for George W. Bush. His rock band was allowed to play some patriotic, John Cougar Mellencamp–style tunes at the Republican convention.

In Washington, he got along with Democrats better than Republicans, but he had trouble with the Democrats, too. "I can't tell you how many of them would say, 'I hate conservatives-God, they're fascists!'" he said. "I'd sit there and go, 'Hey, here I am.' And they'd all say the same thing: 'You're not really-you don't believe that crap. You're not really a conservative. You're a liberal who ran as a conservative to get elected.'"

In 1998, he and Melanie, who have two teenage sons, divorced. In October 2001, he married again; he and his second wife, Susan, are expecting their first child.

One sleepless night during the end of his first term, he was watching A Hard Day's Night and thought, "Why did I stop playing music? I'd rather be playing music than be here."

By the time he was re-elected in 2000, with 78 percent of the vote, he decided he'd had enough. He packed his bags and, in May of 2001, set up a law practice in Pensacola.

"Unfortunately, the longer I'm out of politics, the more I'm happy, my wife's happy, my family's happy," he said.

When discussing why he'd quit Washington, Mr. Scarborough asked if I had done any research about him on the Internet.

"Have you seen I'm a murderer?" he said. "Do a Yahoo search, and this will tell you why I don't want to get back into politics. The second and third sites will say that I got a staff member pregnant and killed her-that I was cheating on my first wife, got her pregnant and I killed her. That's why I was getting out of Congress. Comparing me to Gary Condit. And I'm a big boy, but after reading that you're a Nazi for five years while you're eating cereal, you learn to go, 'O.K., well, I wonder if the Braves won.' And all that came from the 2000 election. I think I was up there probably in some of the ugliest years."

Though serving in Congress was a "duty," he said, being on TV also has a missionary aspect. Someone, after all, has to express the conservative viewpoint without spooking the kids.

"I kind of feel I need to be out there," Mr. Scarborough said. "But I don't call it a passion. If I ever won the lottery, I'd sit on the beach and read magazines and newspapers all day and listen to 70's music on the iPod."

difference between Republicans and Democrats, life has become a bracing lesson

in political realities. Over the next four years this educational experience

will continue unhappily, as George W. Bush pursues the agenda of his sponsors

on the corporate and religious right.

Actually, the lesson began a few weeks before Mr. Bush took

office, when the departing Bill Clinton signed documents that will protect 58

million acres of federally owned land from the depredations of the timber,

mining and energy industries. Those historic signatures represented several

years of public hearings and bureaucratic preparation-all of which were being

completed even while Ralph Nader denounced Mr. Clinton as no better and perhaps

somewhat worse on environmental issues than his Republican predecessors.

Not one grudging word of praise for the Clinton executive

orders was heard from Mr. Nader or his followers. In fact, not much at all has

been heard from the Nader crusaders during the past few months, except for an

occasional bleat pleading their innocence

in the Election Day debacle. Considering how fervently they proclaimed their

democratic idealism during the campaign, they had remarkably little to say

about the travesties inflicted on their fellow citizens by the authorities in

Florida last November. Mostly they responded with butt-covering rhetoric about

how it was all Al Gore's fault.

There was some truth in the Naderite critique of the Gore

campaign and the Clinton administration, but that doesn't diminish their

culpability for what ails the nation now. And by the way, exactly where are the

Naderites now, when Mr. Bush is staffing his government with the likes of John

Ashcroft, Gale Norton and Tommy Thompson? Nowhere to be seen, and perhaps

understandably so.

But just the other night Phil Donahue, a former television

personality who was among Mr. Nader's most prominent endorsers, did surface

momentarily on a Fox News program. In that venue Mr. Donahue insisted-to the

snickering delight of the show's conservative Republican host-that he felt no

regrets. He then launched into an impassioned defense of abortion rights,

apparently failing to notice the cognitive dissonance in his own blather.

As an advocate of feminist freedom, Mr. Donahue must have

been outraged when, on the President's first full working day in office, Mr.

Bush rescinded federal funding for any organization that provides abortion

counseling to women overseas. On that same day Mr. Thompson, the incoming

Secretary of Health and Human Services, threatened to prevent distribution of

RU-486, the abortion drug previously approved by the Clinton

administration.  Does Mr. Donahue

believe that is how a President Gore would have commemorated the 28th

anniversary of Roe v. Wade ?

Mr. Nader himself has never pretended to care about women's

right to choose. There was a time not too long ago, however, when the great

consumer pioneer would have led the fight against cabinet choices like Mr.

Ashcroft and Ms. Norton. He would have warned against their obvious

subservience to special interests and their unfitness to enforce laws they

clearly intend to undermine. Yet neither Mr. Nader nor the groups he controls

have joined the broad coalitions that oppose these worst of the Bush nominees.

It seems that the logic (or illogic) of his Presidential campaign has rendered

him mute in the face of events that have since proved him terribly wrong.

Well, not totally mute. Lately, the erstwhile Green Party

candidate has been formulating helpful advice for the man whom he already has

helped far too much.

"Our new President," wrote Mr. Nader in an essay published

on the inaugural weekend, "should enable and encourage the formation of

voluntary, non-partisan, self-funded associations that would act as watchdogs

and improve government policies. His first step should be a proclamation

endorsing such associations. Then, he should ask Congress to charter them.

Finally, he should order federal agencies to use their mailing resources and

Web sites to encourage citizens to join."

According to Mr. Nader, such a Bush-sponsored upwelling of

civic activism could "redress the severe imbalance of power in Washington

between corporations and citizens." Why, it could even become, in his words,

"President Bush's greatest legacy-the best way to become, in his own words,

'the president for all the people.'"

This sounds like Mr. Nader was trying out a mordant joke,

but he wasn't. He appears to hope that the President-a well-greased instrument

of corporate lobbyists-will somehow become enamored of the Nader version of

mail-order populism. In the meantime, Mr. Nader has announced a less nebulous

plan in which Mr. Bush is definitely interested, that being the defeat of

Congressional Democrats in every district where the Green Party can serve as a

spoiler.

So it turns out that America really does have two parties

with no real difference: the Republicans and the Greens.