Beatty Outlines Campaign Without Declaring One

Actor Warren Beatty sketched out the script for a liberal presidential campaign Wednesday night--but didn’t say whether he would play the leading role himself.

Before a huge turnout of reporters and Southern California liberal activists, Beatty offered few clues on whether he intends to launch a longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Instead, he called for sweeping campaign finance reform, lashed President Clinton’s record and portrayed both of the contenders for the Democratic nomination as cautious centrists in thrall to large contributors.

“We don’t need a third party; we need a second party,” Beatty said in a speech to the Southern California branch of the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action, which presented him with its annual Eleanor Roosevelt award for political activism. The speech was Beatty’s first public appearance since acknowledging that he is considering entering the presidential race.

As much as any single event in recent memory, the evening demonstrated how the lines between politics and celebrity are blurring in the modern media maelstrom. It seemed half political convention, half Hollywood opening with breathless sightings of celebrities like Dustin Hoffman, singer Courtney Love, and actress Faye Dunaway, Beatty’s co-star 32 years ago in “Bonnie and Clyde.”

In a dizzying testament to the media fascination with celebrity, the 62-year-old actor and director drew more than 150 reporters from around the world and about 720 supporters. The media turnout dwarfed the attendance at any of the major policy speeches by the leading candidates in either party this year; earlier Wednesday afternoon, Democratic hopeful Bill Bradley drew a press corps roughly one-tenth as large when he visited a community health care center just south of downtown Los Angeles.

Amid all the frenzy, Beatty delivered an exhaustive and self-deprecating speech. Apparently nervous at first, he rattled off facts and figures and touched on a long list of liberal concerns, including globalization, universal health care (he called for a government-run single-payer universal system), the fees charged for lumber and mining resources on public lands and the gap between rich and poor.

Above all, he insisted that the ever-increasing cost of campaigns has forced politicians to tilt policy toward the wealthy and corporate interests: “Getting the money to win makes decent politicians do indecent things,” Beatty said. He called for complete public financing of all campaigns, including primaries. “The public will never have democracy until it is willing to pay the bill for it,” he said.

What Beatty does next to advance all of these positions remains to be seen.

Despite all the speculation over the last month, Beatty has taken no steps to build a campaign organization; he’s spent much of the time preparing this speech. Some close to him believe the odds are shrinking that he will actually seek the Democratic nomination; he recently ruled out running for the Reform Party nomination.

Others who have spoken to him say that Beatty intends to gauge the reaction to his speech--from Democratic activists and the other contenders--before finally deciding what to do. In the conclusion of his speech, Beatty suggested that he sees value in continuing to attract the spotlight for his concerns--though he slightly dampened speculation about running by reiterating he likes making movies.

Former Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston, for one, said that with Wednesday’s speech Beatty hoped to prod Bradley and Vice President Al Gore to talk more about reforming the campaign finance system and other issues of concern to liberals. “If they don’t,” Cranston said as he stood amid the surging crowd, “he may well decide to think about running himself.”

If he did run, of course, Beatty would begin with a microscopic chance of capturing the nomination from Gore or Bradley; Beatty attracts single digit support--sometimes in the low single digits--in most polls.

Even a video that introduced Beatty captured the evening’s strange mix of earnestness and implausibility: It contained testimonials from liberal icons like George S. McGovern and Jesse Jackson, and from celebrity friends like Hoffman, Barbra Streisand and director Rob Reiner, who gently poked fun at the uproar by telling Beatty on the tape: “I am more than willing to accept a place on your ticket as vice president.”

Yet none of this deterred a massive international press corps from descending on the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. Included in the crush were reporters from Japan, France and England.

At 5 p.m.--more than three hours before Beatty was scheduled to speak--the hotel lobby was already a milling mass of reporters. Almost three dozen photographers and television cameramen stood elbow to elbow behind the kind of rope line used at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes.

Asked when the Southern California ADA had last received so much attention, Lila Garrett, the group’s president, answered without hesitation. “I would say never,” she said. “But when was the last time anybody got this much attention?”

Indeed, for all his celebrity, it is uncharacteristic for Beatty himself to be standing in such a spotlight. Though he has been active in liberal Democratic politics since campaigning for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Beatty hasn’t extensively appeared in public for a political candidate since McGovern in 1972; almost uniquely among Hollywood celebrities, he’s preferred to operate as a backstage advisor. But even in that role, Beatty hasn’t been heavily involved in a presidential campaign since Gary Hart’s bid in 1984.

As a filmmaker, Beatty has a reputation for exhaustively weighing his options and exerting a perfectionist’s control over his projects. Running for president would place him in a far more public--and chaotic--environment than he’s typically been comfortable with, though he shook hands with a politician’s flair as he entered the packed ballroom.

The prospect of a Beatty candidacy has drawn ridicule from many in Washington--and even some activists in Hollywood, who worry that he would inadvertently trivialize the issues he hopes to highlight. But it’s received a surprisingly respectful ear from some prominent liberal activists around the country, who believe Beatty’s celebrity offers a unique opportunity to force onto the national agenda issues such as campaign finance reform and poverty that they maintain have been submerged under Clinton.

“For 18 years, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been ignored,” said Garrett. “I think it would be a positive thing [if he ran]; I’d like to see him do it.”

Likewise, in introducing Beatty, producer Norman Lear stopped short of calling on him to run but reflected the thinking that has made the prospect attractive to some activists: “His is the only Populist voice I know that can attract the media attention--we have more than enough witness of that tonight--it takes to wake and rev up those sleeping grass-roots Democrats who are aching to see the Democratic Party restored to its historic mission.”

Still, the demand for a liberal alternative in the race may be diminishing as Bradley himself moves left in the primary. Bradley has stressed campaign finance reform throughout his campaign, and in the last few weeks, he’s staked out positions to Gore’s left on such issues as health care, gay rights and welfare reform. Bradley’s positioning could reduce the number of disaffected liberals open to an unconventional challenge from Beatty.

“There is no question that Bradley has made himself the viable liberal in the race,” says Bob Borosage, the co-director of the left-leaning Campaign for America’s Future.