Ben Affleck says political 'hypocrisy, corruption and failure' left him 'disillusioned'
Ben Affleck has no interest in running for public office.
The "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" star told Variety that trying to become a politician sounds "terrible" and "tawdry" to him.
"I just think that’s enormously — I don’t know, man, that seems terrible," Affleck told the outlet while promoting a new movie in which he plays a candidate for L.A. mayor. "There’s a reason why political stories are often chosen as parables for moral compromise. You really get thrust up into the contrast between the ideal version of us and how we should be in our lives and the way it is."
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The 54-year-old called politics a "very depressing world, in my opinion. Tawdry. And that has no appeal to me."
He also declined to tell the outlet who he was backing for mayor in Los Angeles this November.
"I haven’t thought about being asked that. I don’t know if, given this movie, my endorsement harms or helps anybody," he admitted. "I should stay agnostic, at least until the movie comes out."
Affleck told Good Morning America on Wednesday that he believes the "collective bar for politics because of the way the political world has sort of evolved has gotten so low that there’s this kind of like, you know, people are just sort of looking for like just ‘Somebody shoot me straight.’’"
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He added that there’s a sense in the country, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican that "we’re not doing a very good job. We have a system that’s kind of failing us."
Playing a man running for mayor taught him: "This is not all that much fun. And it would be a hard way — you’re just raising money all the time."
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He said that he and the man playing his campaign manager in the movie decided one day to take campaign shirts and hats with the name of his character, go out in L.A. and claim he was running for mayor.
When he told people he was running as his character, Affleck said voters would ask for a selfie, they seemed interested and "people would launch into their whole thing and I was like ‘If I’m not careful, I’m going to win this.'"
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"Do not vote for me for mayor!" he joked to the camera.
Affleck called holding office an "awful job" in an interview with USA Today via The Sacramento Bee this week, adding that he’s "so disillusioned with the system and with politics and politicians, and the way it works."
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When told his campaign ad in the movie was good, he answered, "I'd be flattered, except I think there's such a low bar in politics these days."
Affleck explained that his movie "Animals" is about the moral compromises people make.
"The extremely effective nature of when a person individually has something to lose is when they're most apt to make compromises," he says. "Are we just kind of self-seeking animals who, in retrospect, build stories to rationalize where we are and what we've done? And there's another part of us, our sort of higher selves, which says, 'Well, I'm going to adhere this moral code even if there's a cost to me.'"
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The actor has been politically active in the past, campaigning for candidates from former Vice President Al Gore to former President Barack Obama.
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But he said he’s now "averse" to the idea because he’s seen so much "hypocrisy, corruption and failure."
"The way it's constructed now is so geared around money, sound bites, cruelties and gotchas, and little snarky things that really have nothing to do with people's lives whatsoever," he said. "And increasingly, it's easier to get votes appealing to the worst in people than it is appealing to the best in them. If you're telling a story about kind of morality and compromise, there are lots of pressures that are constantly asking you to sacrifice your principles."