OS ANGELES - In his taped greeting to the evening's honoree, comedian Garry Shandling provided some campaign advice, Hollywood-style.
''If you run,'' he suggested, ''make sure you get your name above the title of the country. 'Warren Beatty ... in the United States of America.'''
The soldout crowd - an amalagam of movie stars, old-time liberal Democrats, and the usual stargazers - roared at the joke. But Shandling's advice, as much as Beatty's potential bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, underscored just how blurry the line between politics and celebrity has become.
''It's the perfect conjunction of Washington and Hollywood, which is what the culture has been striving for for half a century,'' said Marty Kaplan, a communications professor at the University of Southern California. ''No one's even sure he's running, but everyone loves a tease.''
With more than 100 reporters from around the world watching, the tease continued Wednesday night. In the same ballroom where the Golden Globe awards are held - and with Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, and Courtney Love, among other celebrities, looking on - Beatty outlined the agenda for a liberal candidacy, but refrained from declaring himself a candidate.
Instead, he called for an overhaul of the campaign finance system and for universal health care, he slammed the Democratic Party for looking Republican and he said both Democratic contenders were cautious centrists untrue to the party's traditions. Beatty, accepting an annual award for political activism from the Southern California chapter of the Americans for Democratic Action, identified himself as a ''tax-and-spend, bleeding-heart liberal Democrat.''
''Is there no protest anymore?'' Beatty asked in a 40-minute speech peppered with statistics on homelessness, poverty, and so-called corporate welfare. ''Have we come to the point where the Democratic Party needs to have a Republican president before it finds its voice again?''
Sometimes sounding like a halting lecturer, often sounding like the rhythmic, rapping US senator he played in the movie ''Bulworth,'' Beatty said he would not let ''monied, honeyed voices of ridicule and reaction'' stop him from considering a run for office.
What was unclear, however, was whether he intends to make a longshot bid for the Democratic nomination.
In the weeks since he was first mentioned as a possible candidate, Beatty has made no effort to pull together a campaign organization. But momentum for his candidacy, at least among the Hollywood liberals who could afford $80 a ticket, was evident at the Beverly Hills Hilton.
''If I remember `Bulworth,''' he can shake the whole country up,'' said Quincy Beaver, president of the California Democratic Council.
Speaking to reporters, Dustin Hoffman said, ''The public knows the professional candidates are not saying what they feel. Warren always tried to make a good movie. He didn't care how it opened the first weekend. I'm saying it's the same and the public knows it in their bone marrow.''
Beatty stressed that the times and what he called the vaccuum in Democratic leadership demand a new voice, whether his or someone else's.
''If an unexpected person showed that he or she had that spirit and the ability to lead and said to me, ''Look there's no liberal running for president ... and that serious people of good judgment are actually talking to that person about running ... it wouldn't make any difference to me how that person became well known. ... I'd say, `There's no harm in thinking about this, however unlikely it might be.'''
