Beatty

Warren Beatty, who isn’t ruling out a run against the Gropinator for California governor, giving the keynote address at the graduation ceremony for UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy (it’s long, so I’m not blockquoting):

Is it hopeless to compete with this access to the public's attention by asking: "Are you aware of the effect of the right-wing deregulation and consolidation of media on public opinion and public policy in this din of the technological tornado that has miniaturized our attention span while what passes for the truth is manipulated by fewer and fewer hands and a sleepy citizenry is aroused by very little other than entertainment devices and most individual entertainer-personalities in the news media become more and more reluctant to resist the conservative politics of their employers? And that there are steps that we as voters can take to rally our legislators into action that can curtail, eliminate or at least ameliorate this movement to plutocracy?"

Difficult.

But if you ask: "Can't you wake the hell up you sleepy sons of bitches and find out what you can do to keep these rich bullshitters from feeding you this crap and telling you what to think?"

Well, that might be a better sound bite, but it risks censorship in mainstream media as obscenity.

[…]

As a Southern Baptist in Virginia I was taught that good public policy was "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I was taught "Love one another" was the point. Good public policy for our economy, our culture and our safety will never fully exist without:

First, public financing of elections.

Second, assuring the separation of church and state.

Third, creating a single-payer universal health care system: Medicare for all.

Fourth, facing the value to the rich and the rest of a just redistribution of our enormous wealth with our tax policy. Concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.

And fifth: moderating against the dangers of the muscular utopianism of an empire that imposes what some call democracy on places in the world where it cannot be sustained and will lead to American decline.

Good public policy in a social democracy declares that might does not make right. Denial of this leads to totalitarianism, communism or fascism. Our silence is an anti-inflammatory, a steroid for bullies.

Bullies are basically cowards.

I say, inflame. Inflame yourself. Inflammation mobilizes. Enjoy the sound of your own voice. With humility, with affection for those who are in the dark.

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Good stuff. I like Warren. The whole speech is worth your time, especially if you’re interested in seeing Schwarzenegger get torn a new asshole.

I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of a Beatty v. Schwarzenegger match-up, though. Is that really the best we can do for the governorship of one of our biggest states? Two actors with no previous political experience? I’m not saying that makes them necessarily unqualified, but it just seems a little sad, somehow, that California voters might be faced with the choice of ousting a former political novice who has proven he was unfit for the job with another political novice who has no record by which to judge his readiness, either. Likely, the Gropinator’s reign has been dismal mostly because he’s got bad policies stemming from his political persuasion, but surely inexperience hasn’t helped. Would Beatty be better? Probably, but who knows for sure? That’s the thing about voting in someone who’s never held office before.

Between this potential match-up and the possibility that if Hillary Clinton wins in 2008, the same two families will have been running the country for 24 consecutive years by the end of her first term, I’m beginning to suffer from a serious case of candidate dissatisfaction.