[ Cheers and applause ]

James: Hello.

Bill: It is Fox, isn't it?

James: Oh, no, it's WB, that's us.

Bill: WB, that's what I meant. I get those confused. WB used to be Fox. Okay, a founding member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, he is a major supporter of democracyoverdollars.com, rock 'n' roll legend, Mr. David Crosby right over here.

[ Cheers and applause ]

How you doing, sir? Good to see you.

David: Good to see you.

Bill: Okay.

[ Sustained applause ]

All right, let's get right to your big issue. A lot of people don't know this, but you are very head up, as I am, about campaign finance reform. It is the issue that somehow got lost in this election. Why? Because the two candidates are bought and sold themselves.

David: Bought and sold! Bought and sold.

Bill: Exactly. That's why they have a conspiracy of silence on this. And I think what is really bad about this whole situation, is not only is the system corrupt and broken, but they have rules. But they're fake rules. You know, like you can take a lot of bribes, but you gotta be outside of your office.

[ Laughter ]

Seriously, you know, you know. Al Gore couldn't make those calls in his office. If he steps out of his office, then he can. And one of the things that's so corrupt is a thing called issue ads. Now you hear about soft money, this is where soft money goes. Soft money means you can't actually endorse a candidate, but you can put an ad on TV endorsing an issue. So you get these ads like, you know, "Steve Kykendall accepted tobacco money, and used that money to buy crack for your children." [ Laughter ]

"Call Steve Kykendall and tell him to give" -- well, they don't want you to call Steve Kykendall, they want you to remember his name when you go into the voting booth and associate with it cancer and grass.

[ Laughter ]

James: The problem is, though, if you were in office, would you want to have campaign finance reform? If you were in office, if you were an incumbent, it wouldn't be to your benefit.

Bill: Right.

Jonah: No, actually, that's precisely wrong. All of these things that you guys denounce -- soft money, issue ads -- all of these things were reforms. These were things that were put forward in the 1970s to make politics less corrupt. And all they've done is create a rube Goldberg machine -- no relation -- which says that they have all these crazy rules about being in office, being out of office.

David: The problem goes deeper than that. Okay? You gotta back off from it and look at the core of it. If you go out and pay $150 for dinner, you expect to get the food. These people have put $500 million on the table to both parties, okay? What do you think they did it for? Laughs?

Aisha: Why are they doing it, yeah.

Jonah: And therefore, what? How do you fix it?

James: They did it because they expect to get control, power, access, use of investments --

[ All talking at once ]

David: No!

Bill: I can tell you how to fix it. How about have blind contributing?

Aisha: Yeah.

Bill: If you really believe in a candidate, and that's what's important to you -- and of course, none of them do, and the proof of that is that they give to both parties.

David: And there's a deeper problem again. Here's the thing -- if you do buy both parties, people, you know why they're not showing up at the polls? Because they don't think their vote counts.

Aisha: And they know where the money is going.

David: They feel disenfranchised.

Bill: And they're right.

David: And they're right.

[ Applause ]

And that's -- that's getting -- that's carving away at the heart of the actual democracy here. Jonah: See, I don't buy it. I think low voter turnout ain't a problem. I think low voter -- like, the idea -

Aisha: It is a problem.

David: It's a participatory democracy. If they don't participate, it's not gonna work.

Aisha: Just so that oh, like the right people turn out, it's okay the way it is.

[ All talking at once ]

Bill: All right, I agree with him on that. People could change the system if they got off their asses and stopped watching "Survivor" and cared. But they don't.

[ Applause ]

And so who needs 'em?

David: No, we need 'em. It's a participatory democracy.

Bill: And you're right, we do need 'em.

David: This was designed as a participatory democracy, it won't work if nobody gets involved. Aisha: They do, but I'm saying if the system wasn't so stacked in favor of people with lots of cash, there would be a lot more parties.

Jonah: You mean the people who aren't voting aren't voting because --

David: Yeah, they're not voting because they don't believe that their votes count. They think you can't fight City Hall.

[ All talking at once ]

Jonah: -- and make an unconstitutional system so we can educate people to come out and vote.

David: I didn't say that. I said, I said we need to fix it. I'm not smart enough to know how. I know there's a way. I know that we can --

[ All talking at once ]

James: -- finance campaigns is one way.

Aisha: Even money for everybody.

Jonah: You liked -- I assume you liked Eugene McCarthy, right?

David: I did, yeah. His entire campaign was paid for by, like, three guys. Now, what is wrong?

Bill: And he lost.

David: Yeah. Okay, but --

[ Laughter ]

And he got out there and he made his point.

Jonah: I'm sorry, so it's only a successful system if the guys you like win? I mean, that doesn't make any sense.

Bill: No, no, but if you really wanted to reform the system, you would have a blind contributing system.

Jonah: Why not --

Bill: No one knows where the money came from, so you don't, like, get $1 million --

Jonah: But then you're talking about publicly financing your system.

David: No, we're not talking about that.

Bill: It's just blind.

Aisha: No, we're saying --

Jonah: But then no one's gonna give the money and you're gonna see it fall off. That's why soft money was created.

Bill: Well, good. Then we won't have to see Steve Kykendall --

[ Laughter ]

Listen, we gotta take a break. We'll be right back.

[ Applause ]

Bill: All right. Just to show you what we're talking about, this guy who I was talking about whose ads are running here in California accepted $125,000 from Phillip Morris the day before the '94 elections so no one would know, and then voted for weaker penalties for selling cigarettes to minors. That's just one example, there's a million. The problem is that the crux of this is that the opponents of campaign finance reform say that money is free speech. And I don't know how they make that leap. Because if money, if the act of giving money is free speech -- what act isn't free speech? If I punch him in the nose, because that's a statement, isn't that free speech?

Jonah: Well, you guys believe that burning a flag is free speech. So why can't money -- I mean, intangible things can be speech.

Aisha: Okay, money is not analogous to an act, to a personal act because --

Jonah: Money is more analogous --

Aisha: Well, I disagree, because I -- if I'm speaking and you're speaking, our voices are hopefully equal. We could both speak as loud as we can, we can hopefully make our point be articulate.

Bill: Right.

Aisha: If you're rich, my speech is not as good as your speech, okay? [ Applause ]

David: Exactly.

Jonah: And this network has more speech than somebody else.

Aisha: But my point is --

Jonah: Campaign finance reform --

Aisha: It's not equal.

Jonah: Of course it's never been equal, it will never be equal.

Aisha: Shouldn't we try to make it more equal? That's what this country is based on.

[ All talking at once ]

David: The way you try is by giving everybody a shot.

James: So wait, wait, wait.

Jonah: You're creating more rules.

David: Give everybody a shot.

James: I've held back on this until now, so I have something to say. I think that the definition of democracy for me is the avoidance of tyranny. That is what Republicans will always argue when they say hands off the social structure. The whole thing that we're just supposed to kick England out and get 'em out of our hair and let freedom ring, right?

Bill: Right.

James: Well, tyranny is when the haves have more power than the have-nots. This is what we must fight. This is the fight that we've been fighting for 200 years and it's the fight that we're fighting now.

[ Applause ]

Jonah: That sounds wonderful. That sounds wonderful, but it is utterly meaningless in real life.

James: No, it's not meaningless in real life.

Jonah: No, in the sense that you're never -- look, this network gives you a megaphone a lot of people don't have. Now, according to --

David: They're not giving you a megaphone a lot of people don't have.

Jonah: Yeah, okay, fine. But he gets it every night, he gets to rail against Bill Clinton, I mean, get railed and favor Bill Clinton, all that stuff. That's his right, this network gave him the megaphone.

David: There isn't anybody else you're railing at.

Jonah: All the people in Hollywood would set fire to themselves like a Vietnamese monk if you tried to --

Aisha: Oh, that will never happen.

Jonah: -- if you tried to regulate Hollywood.

Aisha: Oh, not the face, not the face!

Jonah: -- If you tried to say, "Oh, you can't make this kind of movie, but you can make that kind of movie." But somehow free speech is the center of the controversy.

David: No, no, free speech is a person expressing themselves, and --

Jonah: -- by whatever means.

[ All talking at once ]

Jonah: You mean a record company --

Bill: But writing a check, that's what we're talking about.

Jonah: Writing a check to run a commercial.

Bill: I can understand --

Aisha: No, it's not.

Bill: But money facilitates speech the way a car could get you to church. It doesn't mean a Chevy is religious.

Aisha: I don't like the -- wait a second. But also --

Jonah: Would you be in favor -- would you be in favor of saying, well, you know, the March on Washington, people were allowed to spend only up to $50 on bus tickets, and if that wouldn't get them to Washington, then they can't go?

Aisha: That makes no sense at all. No, it's not the same thing.

David: The problem isn't -- the problem isn't whether it's free speech or not for me. I know that it is a serious issue. But the problem is that as long as you can buy the election, as long as the guy with the most money -- a billion bucks they're going to spend this time? The guys with the most money for the cleverest spin ads get the keys to the kingdom. That's not what they had in mind. When they wrote the Constitution, it was in an age when mass media was movable type. Okay, they didn't envision --

Bill: You said it -- that's not what they had in mind.

David: It isn't, and we know it.

Aisha: One voice. One voice --

David: And we know it.

Bill: And that's, you know, the people who hide behind the Constitution -- for example, with the second amendment about guns -- I constantly point out to them, it's called an amendment. The word amendment itself, means, oh, things change.

Aisha: Because back then, I would not have been able to vote. I would not have been able to vote.

David: I think we need to, and I think that would be the right venue.

Jonah: But as the Constitution stands right now, all of what you guys are talking about strikes me as unconstitutional. It's saying that the government, that "The New York Times" and all these guys get more powerful and more opportunity to speak, and everybody else, whether it's the NAACP or the Christian Coalition, is somehow barred from the process.

James: The problem is television. We are now in an age, as of the last 25 years, that it is possible to buy an election with television coverage.

Aisha: Just by flooding the airwaves.

James: On television, or you can --

David: That is not what they intended.

Bill: Right.

James: Exactly.

Jonah: They bought it with leaflets, they bought it with --

David: No. Bull! Total bull.

[ All talking at once ]

Aisha: Just accepting the way things are in a cynical way does not make you intelligent. People are like, "Well, that's the way it is and it's screwed up, so hang it." That's not the way to approach it.

Bill: That may be true, that it's less corrupt, but it's still corrupt. And that's not good enough.

Jonah: Here's where I agree with you guys. The scandal's not what's illegal, it's what's legal. And I agree with you.

Bill: Right.

Jonah: But the solution that you guys propose is to create more regulation.

David: I don't know what solution we could propose.

James: We must try something.

David: No, trying something, they've been doing it for 20 years and it's made it more corrupt. Try something else. Try getting rid of all of --

Bill: There is a McCain-Feingold bill.

Jonah: Yeah, it was terrible bill. I love John McCain, terrible bill.

David: Well, I disagree. It's a step in the right direction. I don't think it's enough. I think publicly financed elections are the right way to go. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper.

Aisha: Then it's about the message. It's about what you are really trying to accomplish for the country and not about --

Bill: I've got to accomplish my own little thing here, which is selling some products. We'll be right back.

[ Applause ]

Bill: Okay. I wanted to mention the fact that yesterday, it came out that George Bush got a dui 25 years ago. As someone who also got a dui about ten years ago, I have sympathy with this guy. I find it very peculiar that it came out at the moment that it did, five days before the election. I don't know if it matters. I don't think he was even drunk. I think he just can't recite the Alphabet.

Aisha: Yeah, he's just --

[ Laughter ]

His eyes are just crossed all the time, right?

Bill: You know --

Aisha: "You want me to look at what finger? What? I don't know."

Bill: He -- I can't believe that Gore, at this point, has to resort to this.

James: It's Nixonian, isn't it?

Bill: It is a little Nixonian.

Aisha: Again, these -- I have a problem with all -- there's always this moral high ground that the Republican Party likes to take, and I'm not gonna assign it to either party, but they do tend to try to control that area. And I think it's very ironic that these guys are saying, "We're the moral, the upstanding, we're about family values," and the guy's driving around drunk. I think that you can't, you know --

Bill: Come on, he was --

Aisha: I mean, Newt Gingrich is another perfect example of a guy who's screaming about family values, screaming about how his party occupies the moral high ground, and he's divorcing his wife on her death bed. That's bull pucky.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

James: I think that comes to the point, it's like, we tend to want to look to our political leaders for moral leadership. And I think it's ridiculous. I don't look to my plumber for moral leadership.

Bill: Right.

David: And what's more important is, we're looking at the surface and not the substance. What we want to know about these guys is what's in their hearts, what really matters to them, what are their real values, what's really --

Aisha: Yeah, absolutely.

David: What kind of choices are they gonna make?

Aisha: And clearly, what matters to bush is a nice big juicy keg.

David: I know, I know -- I don't really care.

Jonah: The guy quit drinking when he was like -- when he was 40 years old, he was born again. I mean, the idea that you're calling him a lush is a little off-base.

Aisha: I'm not calling him a lush, he's a drinker. He didn't -- I quit drinking when I was 21, you know, when I was done with college, and it was time to move on. I think if you get to your 40s --

Bill: I quit drinking about five minutes ago, and I'm gonna start again in about ten.

David: But guys, the point is that that stuff isn't the real issue and it's more of, you know, surface as opposed to substance. We need people who will actually -- if we want to get good people in the job, we're gonna have to change it so that the focus is not on, you know, what they look like, or, you know, whether they, you know, lost their boy scout badge. It's --

[ Applause ]

Do they really care about this -- do they really care about this country, and do they look at this country and the job the way Colin Powell described it, as a stewardship?

Jonah: Yeah, I agree.

James: -- A smokescreen. I don't -- I think every politician is a slime bag.

Aisha: Well, wait, no.

[ Applause ]

James: No, wait a minute. I want 'em to be my slime bag. I want 'em to fight for my issues like a barracuda. And that's my representation. I think there's no higher good.

Jonah: That's ridiculous.

James: That's why Europeans think that we're little 12-year-Olds here in America.

Aisha: But wait a second. I think that -- I think that.

Jonah: They're just a bunch of snobs sitting around the cafes with 12% unemployment. I don't want to hear anything about Europeans.

Aisha: If any one of us ran for office --

Jonah: It's 300 years old. It's full of a bunch of old stuff that the old civilization did. Yeah, it's all old. What have they done for me lately? They're a bunch of useless, ridiculous --

[ All talking at once ]

Aisha: The spice girls. But I would say that if any one of us ran for office right now, we would all be pegged slime bags. It is an impossible position to take. And that's why nobody wants to do it.

Bill: No, it's not.

Aisha: I'm saying that --

Bill: All you have to do is have the balls not to care if you lose.

Aisha: Well, yes, and then you will.

Bill: That's what they don't have.

[ Applause ]

Aisha: And then you will. And if it was about the quality of your work, and your ability to lead and not about what you did when you were in college and not about what you do at home, then more people who are of good character who don't -- who aren't fearing big dragged through the mud --

Bill: The only thing I like about bush is that he used to party. I have to take a break. We'll be right back.