The Distorting Power of Money

The following excerpts have been edited from director and actor Warren Beatty’s speech before the Americans for Democratic Action awards dinner in Beverly Hills on Wednesday night. It was covered by a throng of more than 150 reporters, far more than showed up for declared presidential candidates John McCain and Bill Bradley, who were in the Los Angeles area the same day.

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I am unable to accept your Eleanor Roosevelt Award as anything other than an old-time, unrepentant, unreconstructed, tax-and-spend, bleeding-heart, die-hard, liberal Democrat.

I believe in the value of social programs, a safety net, regulation and an active government.

I have no problem professing this because I love my day job--making movies. I have the great luxury of not having a career as a politician, and I can still say what I want to say.

Six weeks ago, several of the grand mentioners of the media began to mention me as what most people of sound mind would call a highly improbable candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. I responded only that “that seemed extremely unlikely. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, but there must be somebody better.” Having said nothing publicly since (I’ve been on a listening tour of my house), tonight seems not a moment too soon to speak up.

This administration deserves a lot of sympathy for having to cope with ruthless Republican Congresses. But in what Paul Wellstone calls the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, when we hear the record of the political bargains of the past seven years spun back to the public as “progress,” we have to object.

After Theodore Roosevelt, progress in this century has always been made by Democrats--but Democrats fighting to the end for what they believed in, not settling for what they could get. By changing public-opinion polls, not following them. By spending popularity, not hoarding it.

The big advances--Social Security, the welfare safety net, the minimum wage, the Marshall Plan, civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, federal aid to education, the war on poverty, Head Start--have all been made by Democrats who wouldn’t give up the fight.

So how can we not have heard from either Democratic candidate a serious objection to the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party proudly advertising our economic expansion as “a boom of unparalleled prosperity for the nation” when 60% of our people are doing no better in 1999 than in 1989?

How can we gloat about prosperity when the poverty level hasn’t changed? Or when child poverty is four times that of Western Europe? And extreme child poverty has gone up 26% in the past year? And in the richest city in the country, outside this hotel, one out of three children lives in poverty, and homicide is still the largest single cause of death for children under 18? And, according to the officials of 30 other major cities, “the strong economy has had very little positive impact on hunger and homelessness”?

The disparity of wealth between rich and poor is higher than ever: The poorest fifth of Americans have less then they had in 1977, and the richest have 43% more. The pay of the average corporate chief executive officer has gone from 42 times to 419 times as much as the worker. A study of four Northwestern states shows half the available jobs don’t pay a livable wage. And there were 56% more layoffs in ’98 than the year before. The richest 2.7 million Americans have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 100 million.

How can we have a party that says, “most things are going right for America”? Have we come to the point where the Democratic Party needs to have a Republican president before it regains its voice? Without hearing liberal Democrats, you won’t hear about these unrepresented people. You’ll hear about the unprecedented prosperity of globalization.

Why? Because these unrepresented people make no campaign contributions, 96% of the people in America make no campaign contributions. Every penny of financing for every candidate for every public office in America, from dog catcher to president, is supplied by 4% of the people. They’re mainly rich, and they are represented. The $50 million raised so far to select Gov. Bush as the Republican nominee has come from three-one-hundredths of 1% of the people.

That’s why less than half the people vote. They feel they have nothing to do with the process of selecting the candidates, and they’re right.

The candidates elected for public service aren’t financed by public money. They’re selected by private money. From people who usually want some kind of return on their investment.

The primary cancer in this sick system, the big money in politics, has so metastasized into every area of government that we can’t afford to ignore that the patient--American democracy--is in mortal danger of dying on the table.

Getting the money to win makes decent politicians do indecent things. But billion-dollar subsidies and tax breaks, the pork barrel and corporate welfare, are only the smaller tumors. There are bigger ones.

Our taxpayers are bailing out thieves in Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and other countries and at the same time bailing out major American financial houses who refuse to face the consequences of their bad investments overseas. We should be helping to construct a new set of international ground rules to curb speculation and financial abuse.

The genius of America is the successful harnessing of the dynamic creativity of the private sector for the public good. No sensible person wants to dampen that. But our government is susceptible to a corporate economic globalization that is not free trade but corporate-managed trade. And the global economy is not working yet for most people. But we can’t turn our back. We have to work with it.

The problem in this new economy is the undue influence these institutions and corporations have over government actions. They set the rules. Others aren’t invited to the table. What we are in danger of experiencing is a slow-motion coup d’etat of big money’s interests over the public interest. So the global rules, written into trade agreements like NAFTA, protect things like patents and intellectual property rights but not labor rights, profits but not people, investments but not the environment. We know the results--growth, increasing trade, some development, some people making lots of money. But we have sweatshops again. Child labor. Slave labor. Destruction of forests, fish, water and air. We’re making the world safe for globalization rather than making globalization safe for the world.

Why aren’t the Democratic candidates addressing this? Could it possibly be that the leading candidates in both parties are, by definition, those who have raised the most money from these same sources? We don’t need a third party. We need a second party.

Does anyone doubt the role of campaign contributors in keeping the defense budget as high as it is? Or stifling gun control? Or hampering environmental protection? Or buying subsidies for nuclear, coal and oil. Or causing the $70-billion to $80-billion digital spectrum to be given away to broadcasters? A democracy becomes a plutocracy under these conditions.

The last two federal-election cycles in 1996 and 1998, combined, comes to $3.6 billion. With complete public financing, that would cost the public about $3.50 per person per year. What a small price for the people to pay for knowing their elected representatives don’t owe anything to anybody but the public.

It’s estimated that $1,000 per taxpayer per year is spent on corporate welfare and pork-barrel legislation. Three and a half bucks is not a lot to help to get rid of it.

Neither Democratic candidate has advocated complete public financing, including the primaries, of all federal campaigns. But the public will never have democracy until it’s willing to pay for it. Aren’t we willing to spend $3.50 a year to get our government back?

If somehow I could reach back in time and meet Eleanor Roosevelt today, we could say to her, “Mrs. Roosevelt, the party’s drifting. It’s enslaved by big money. It’s lost its purpose. You stand for the principles that will return it to its mission. The people trust your spirit.”

Sadly, only the spirit of Mrs. Roosevelt is alive today.

But if an unexpected person showed that he or she had that spirit, and the ability to lead, and said to me there was no liberal running for president, no Wellstone, no Jackson, no Kennedy, no Mario Cuomo, and serious people of good judgment were talking to that person about running, it would make no difference to me whether that person had become well-known as a basketball player, or a businessman, an actor, a wrestler or a drum majorette.

I’d say to that person:

“Look, Drum Majorette, there’s no harm in thinking about it, however unlikely it might be. But whatever you do, go ahead and speak up. Speak up for the people nobody speaks for.

“And if you speak up well, maybe you’ll influence some people and the party and the candidates that are running. And who knows what else?

“And remember, Drum Majorette, don’t delude yourself into thinking it’s got an awful lot to do with you. It doesn’t. It’s the time you’re living in. And a temporary vacuum that allows you the privilege of being heard.

“And one more thing, Drum Majorette: When those plutocrats start with you, when you start hearing those moneyed, honeyed voices of ridicule and reaction, let them call you coy. Let them call you flirtatious. But keep talking. Keep that spirit. You’ve got to keep the spirit.” *