‘Top Line’ — Top 10 Least Powerful People in DC

ABC News’ Rick Klein: Washington loves power lists — and GQ got into the game this week with its “50 Most Powerful People in DC.” Which raises the question: Who are the least powerful? We put the question to our Twitter friends overnight, and David Chalian and I mulled some of the suggestions on today’s “Top Line” with Ana Marie Cox of Air America, one of the keenest observers around of the powerful and non-powerful among us. So with help of our Tweeps, with present company excluded (since GQ excluded us from its list, making presence on this list implied), reserving the right to book any of these people on our show, and with a tip of the cap to our friend and colleague George Stephanopoulos (No. 31 on GQ’s list), our Top 10 Least Powerful People in DC: 10. John McCain/John Kerry. The Senate’s almost-presidents share a spot, as they share the purgatory of being thisclose to the ultimate power spot but then resuming their positions as one of 100. This is actually slightly unfair to both men — Kerry is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while McCain continues to be a leading voice (of the mavericky variety) inside the GOP — but they’re sitting through caucus lunches instead of Situation Room briefings. 9. Susan Collins. Maine’s other senator. She’s used to being a sought-after Republican vote, part of the dwindling band of moderates who offer President Obama fleeting chances at bipartisanship (remember the stimulus?). This week, she’s the senator from Maine who isn’t Olympia Snowe. 8. Jim Zorn. Washington is a football town, and the Redskins’ coach isn’t so much reviled as he is pitied. Laboring to (not) lead a sub-par team, under a mercurial and meddling owner, suspecting he’s about to get axed — his season lumbers on at a pace that would make Fred Thompson proud. 7. Gay-rights advocates. One of Ana Marie Cox’s suggestions, in the wake of last weekend’s LGBT rights march. President Obama gave a speech Saturday night promising to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell” — which, of course, he promised to repeal as a candidate. Nine months in, the commander-in-chief is still promising. 6. Tom Vilsack. He was the first one in (and the first one out of) the 2008 presidential contest. He was a sought-after Iowa endorsement — and, later, a visible surrogate for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now he’s … secretary of agriculture? Name another agriculture secretary — any one. This is one title doesn’t help get you a reservation at Ristorante Tosca. 5. Terry McAuliffe. We miss Terry — the motor-mouthed, once ubiquitous former DNC chair who, like Vilsack, went all-in for Hillary Clinton. Then came an ill-fated gubernatorial run across the river in Virginia. (He lost to a guy named Creigh.) Still appearing regularly (and energetically) at The Palm! 4. Cindy Sheehan. If you hold a protest and nobody covers it, does it really happen? Now Sheehan — whose Camp Casey was a Crawford mainstay in the Bush years — gets to find out whenever she chooses, as a soon-to-be resident of Washington. 3. Roland Burris/Ted Kaufman. One is Blago-tainted, the other Biden-tainted. Both are actual voting United States senators. Neither will be in 2011. Burris can say (on his crypt?) that he filled President Obama’s old Senate seat; Kaufman is keeping the seat warm for another Biden — and it’s getting colder. 2. Actual Washington, DC voters. Lest we forget, since we’re reminded by our license plates, this is the city of Taxation Without Representation (and does anyone really know who their city council member is?). Even North Dakota gets a House member and two senators (who wind up being really, really powerful by building seniority that the “shadow senators” we’re allowed to vote for don’t get). 1. Levi Johnston. The father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild has forfeited any claims he might have had to being taken seriously by hawking pistachios and deciding to appear in Playgirl. Just about no one in Washington even knew Playgirl was still around. Fewer want to see Levi Johnston naked. He almost married the daughter of the woman who almost became vice president, which makes him … absolutely nothing.