Behind the Sharing of a Common Bond : The Helms amendment creates ‘an uneasy alliance’ between those on Capitol Hill and the Hollywood Hills

Rep. Fred Grandy (R-Iowa) peers across the huge, wood desk in his private digs in the Cannon House Office Building, drawing a careful parallel between Hollywood and Washington--both of which, he says, are “one-industry towns fueled by gossip.”

“When I was first a staffer here on the Hill,” Grandy says, gesturing in the direction of a block of restaurants and shops not far from the Capitol, “there was a little joint up there that was a watering hole for members of Congress and their staffs.

“When (Sen.) Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) walked in, it was no big deal, but if Robert Redford walked in, the place was all aflutter. Now, similarly, at Ma Maison or the Bistro Garden or Spago in L.A., if Robert Redford walks in, OK, there’s a passing glance perhaps--to see what he’s wearing.

“But if Ted Kennedy walks in, or (retired Lt. Col.) Ollie North, for that matter, you’re talking about something truly fascinating.”

Grandy looks up, chuckling. “There is a subtle fascination with each other that is at the bottom of all this,” he says of the common ground between Washington and Hollywood. “It’s almost clandestine. Politicians are fascinated by people in the arts. People in the arts, in turn, are fascinated by politicians.”

This affinity has a great deal to do with how arts issues are dealt out in the Capitol crucible. Arts politics defies many traditional political laws of supply and demand. Politicians who gravitate to arts causes tend to do so because of personal interest in the subject matter--sometimes even in apparent defiance of the demographics of their legislative districts.

Arts issues navigate through Congress largely because of this intensely personal chemistry. In most years, no one notices, because monetary amounts are small and the issues unlikely to stir major debate. But this year has been different. Passions have been aroused by a debate over the proper role of the National Endowment for the Arts. The political tempest this has stirred sometimes has even overshadowed the revolution in Eastern Europe, defense spending and the national debt.

Few politicians here could have the natural license Grandy does to draw his parallel about arts and politics. A former actor, he played Gopher in the television series “The Love Boat”--but that was just an interruption in a Washington career that began in 1970 when Grandy worked as a legislative aide.

Grandy is recognized on the street here sometimes more from his television persona than for his performances on the floor of the House of Representatives. His point is that little separates actors and politicians, and this commonality says a great deal about the confluence of the arts and the making of public policy.

“No question about it, politicians and artists are both about the same thing,” said Anne Murphy, executive director of the American Arts Alliance and a longtime arts-political observer. “Both of them are about getting the feel of society. Both are very big players in that tunnel of the present that everything needs to move through to get to the future.”

“It’s the kind of an issue that you feel the country needs,” said Rep. Sidney Yates (D-Ill.), the 80-year-old dean of arts supporters in the House. “It’s the kind of sustenance that the country needs for its well being, its way of life, the atmosphere of living. Somebody has to do that kind of work in Congress. These issues are important and they show an importance to the people.”

Grandy’s theory--widely echoed on Capitol Hill--is one of a variety proposed by congressmen, senators and their staffs for the peculiar compulsion that drives the symbiosis of the arts and politics. It is a relationship that far predates this year’s fractious debate over censorship, freedom of expression and the rights of taxpayers--as if their collective could ever be quantified--not to have to pay for art they don’t like.

It is an attraction that transcends many usual measures of political worth. Political players agree that arts legislation, arts appropriations and arts issues produce little in terms of votes at reelection time, campaign contributions or any other common political currency.

Arts issues have a broad constituency in Congress, but recent events suggest the support may be wider than it is thick. When President Ronald Reagan attempted to slash the NEA’s budget by 50% in 1981--with elimination of the agency proposed for the following year--arts political leaders formed the Congressional Arts Caucus and Concerned Senators for the Arts.

Today the Arts Caucus, the second largest in Congress, claims 251 members of 535 in the House and Senate. Ironically, the caucus membership does not include Yates. “I don’t happen to belong,” Yates said, “because I try to work in other ways.” Concerned Senators claims a membership of 68--more than a two thirds majority of the chamber.

The emotional volatility of arts issues, however, has largely neutralized this apparent power of raw numbers in the arts debate this year. Despite the breadth of membership in the two groups, they were unable to avert the divisive debate last summer over whether the NEA should make grants to support controversial art--including that which is sometimes offensive, obscene or indecent to some viewers.

In a single Sept. 28 vote in which the Senate, by a margin of 62 to 35, tabled one in a summer-long series of amendments proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to impose harsh restrictions on the NEA, seven Senate members of the arts caucus--including Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.)--voted with Helms.

It has occurred at a time when, coincidentally, the arts caucus has, by most accounts, evolved into more of a luncheon club at which congressmen and senators can be photographed with movie stars than a meaningful political entity.

“I guess I’ve never really looked to the caucus for great help,” said Rep. Bill Green (R-N.Y.), who represents a strip of Manhattan that includes more museums and arts institutions than any other single congressional district in the country. Green is also a member of the caucus executive board. “It is a wonderful opportunity to get your picture taken with Alan Alda,” he said, “but I don’t know that there’s much beyond that.”

Sen. Jim Jeffords (R-Vt.) agrees the organization has drifted from its franchise. “I’m concerned we’ve gotten away from being able to articulate better what the purpose of the endowment is,” said Jeffords, who was a founder of the arts caucus while he was a member of the House. “Our purpose is not just to have lunch with a superstar. Our purpose is to protect the arts and their function in our society.”

Two weeks ago, 17 members of the caucus, led by its chairman, Rep. Bob Carr (D-Mich.), visited Los Angeles. At least two closed discussions of censorship concerns were held with local arts officials--one at the Los Angeles Theatre Center and the other at the American Film Institute.

Carr insists that the power of the caucus to assure the political well-being of arts issues is intact. “I think (caucus) members who may have voted in favor of (Sen. Helms) were playing defensive ball,” Carr said. “When we get the issue off the front page, those members can be counted on to vote for increases in the NEA budget and to support the activities of the caucus. On any one vote, people have one eyeball on their reelection and the 30-second TV spot that an opponent can run on them.”

The volatility of the situation has left the arts with just a handful of truly staunch defenders--fewer than 20 in both the House and Senate by most counts. In fact, the burden of defending arts causes has fallen in large degree to just three people: Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) in the Senate and Yates and Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.) in the House. In 1965, Pell was an original sponsor of the legislation that initially established the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moreover, the 1989 battles have occurred just ahead of what could turn out to be a watershed year for arts politics. Both Pell and Yates have been identified with arts causes for decades and both men are clearly nearing the ends of their public careers. Each has announced for reelection in 1990, but both face potentially bruising and financially well-heeled reelection campaigns.

There is a more than passing chance that each of these arts policy legends--and with them their enormous clout in seniority in the Senate and House--could disappear from the political scene next year.

Yates faces a potentially serious primary challenge in his Chicago district next year from Edwin Eisendrath, 31, a young Chicago alderman from a wealthy family with a track record of arts patronage. Opinions about what will happen are divided among seasoned Chicago political observers. Many experts think Yates will eat Eisendrath alive, but others see the race as threatening to Yates’ 40-year career in the House.

Even if Yates wins, however, the 1990 census is expected to show a drop in Illinois population and strip the state of perhaps two House seats. Chicago political observers say Yates’ Ninth District may be at risk in reapportionment.

In Rhode Island, Pell anticipates a general election challenge from Rep. Claudine Schneider, a moderate-liberal, pro-choice Republican who, though she has not yet announced her candidacy, reportedly has told Pell privately she intends to try to unseat him. Observers here say they expect the campaign could be expensive.

Schneider, an arts caucus member, is expected to formally announce just after the first of the year. President Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush have already made fund-raising appearances on her behalf. Schneider’s track record on arts issues is unestablished, but she did speak on the House floor during the censorship debate in support of controversial photographs produced by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano that were the initial causes of the NEA crisis earlier this year.

Even the theoretical possibility that Yates and/or Pell might vanish from the scene at such a politically risky juncture for the arts has caused apprehension in the creative community. “There is no question that Congressman Yates and Sen. Pell have been of immense help to the arts ever since the arts have been a part of the federal program,” said NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer.

“If they were to pass from the scene politically, it would leave a tremendous void. How it would fill itself, I can’t tell you. There are some very strong people coming up behind, but I don’t think (for instance) that you can replace Sidney Yates. He has not only been a passionate advocate of the arts, but he has consummate skill in the workings of the Congress. You’re not going to clone him.”

But the American Arts Alliance’s Murphy has a longer view. “You know what happened in the dance world when (the legendary George) Balanchine died (in 1983)? While there is a Balanchine alive, it’s real hard to identify clearly the other talent that exists because the spotlight is so directly on one person,” Murphy said.

“When those leaders aren’t there, other people juggle for that spot. Other times, it’ll move into a situation where there is more than one, with leadership by sharing. You can’t identify that new leader until the first one’s not there.”

The line of succession in the Senate remains unclear. In the House, Williams has already established himself as a forceful and passionate political advocate for the arts. Reps. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.) and Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) could eventually step into Yates’ shoes, should Yates not win reelection next year or retire in the near future even if he does prevail in the 1990 race.

The situation is so fraught with uncertainty that Williams has already publicly said he may seek a strategy to delay action on a bill extending the NEA’s life--the agency technically expires next year--until 1991. The strategy is controversial, but AuCoin and others in the House and Senate believe it may be necessary to avoid election year gutting of federal support for the arts driven by sound-bite politics that cast roles in the debate strictly of congressmen who favor obscenity and those who oppose it.

“I think it’s a smart strategy,” AuCoin said. “The last thing I want to do is give Jesse Helms a horse to ride. Reauthorization ought to occur when people have time to listen without having feverish panic running through them. That doesn’t happen when the turbochargers are on in an election year.”

In a sense, said Rep. Tom Coleman (R-Mo.), the Great Arts Controversy of 1989 caught many people in the House and Senate by surprise--so much so that the political initiative was lost, at least temporarily. “The arts have a tradition of bipartisanship here, but we haven’t had any controversy around the arts, other than a little bit (every few years when the NEA comes up for reauthorization),” Coleman said.

“Nothing had triggered some sort of political tooling up, so to speak. My sense is that we don’t hear from the arts community except in a time of budget restraint and that’s about it. I guess it’s human nature, but if you’re going to be involved in the process, you have to be attuned and involved and have a presence that is consistent and continual.”

Williams, chair of the House Education and Labor Committee’s subcommittee on postsecondary education that will have jurisdiction over the NEA reauthorization debate, conceded that defections from the ranks of arts supporters by many senators and congressmen played a key role in the political turmoil of the last few months.

Williams said the fact that 1990 is an election year is crucially important. He said defections from the ranks of senators and congressmen who may normally be counted as arts advocates are inevitable in a political climate in which conservatives have promised to make any vote or public position in favor of controversial arts projects into high-profile campaign issues. Thus, Williams said, many in Congress who would normally provide votes to stave off encroachments on artistic freedom may elect to cover themselves politically, instead.

“It (the disarray among arts supporters in Congress) has something to do with the fact that people in the House and Senate who insisted on the (Helms’ original amendment) were cleverly appealing to the lowest common denominator,” Williams said. “That is the fear of the unknown by the American taxpayer and the unwillingness of the American taxpayer to have their tax dollars used for any effort for which they are not in full agreement.

“Short-run appeals to the dark side of human nature are quite often successful--in the short run. What Sen. Helms is after will bear some political fruit, but only in the near term.

“If you can tap that fear of that unknown, you can open up a political vein in America. Many members were simply very hopeful that a compromise that didn’t violate the freedom of artistic expression could be reached (and congressmen stranded by political risk of bucking Helms would be let off the hook). I think in reaching the compromise, we breached the threshold of censorship.”

Williams referred to language in the NEA’s 1990 appropriation bill that prohibits support to obscene artworks that do not meet high standards of artistic excellence. The wording itself appears to most legal experts to effectively prohibit nothing, but early tests of the NEA’s nervousness about coming in conflict with the political sentiment that led to the language has already led to a crisis when Frohnmayer cut off--and then restored--a grant to an AIDS-related art show in New York that contained some politically provocative and sexually explicit work.

The episode underscored the political vulnerability of the arts endowment since Frohnmayer, a former Portland, Ore., lawyer, stumbled badly in making political decisions about how to control the controversy. His having to take a crash course in Washington political reality could not come at a less propitious moment.

Helms, who has consistently refused to discuss his arts philosophy or political strategy with reporters in any depth, declined half a dozen interview requests in the preparation of this article.

At the same time, politicians and arts-politics observers here agree that the nation’s arts community suffers from a striking naivete in its attempts to deal with the political rough-and-tumble of Washington. This naivete--combined with a paralyzing inability to take action when this year’s political crisis first developed--made a bad political situation far worse than it should have become, these observers say.

“I think most congressmen . . . have a sort of generalized warm and cozy feeling about (NEA grant) money coming, for instance, to the Omaha symphony, and they feel some pride in that,” said James Fitzpatrick, a prominent Washington arts lawyer and president of the Washington Project for the Arts, a local artist-run gallery and collective. “But the arts as an effective positive lobbying force has never been one where there has been perceived to be any need for it.

“Politically, art has become an issue in a negative context. That has to change dramatically. There’s going to need to be a new, energetic, pro-active strategy that much more aggressively defines the federal government’s involvement in the arts as an essential part of our economic and cultural life.

“We’re going to have to find ways in 30-second sound bites to carry the message that, just like great education and good health, a flourishing arts community is important to our civilization. Unfortunately, I don’t think the arts community, at this point, is either prepared or capable of doing it.”

Jeffords, the arts caucus founder, said artists and arts organizations tend to leave their heads in the political sand until some immediate crisis looms, then bombard the Washington offices of a too-narrow group of congressmen with panic-stricken demands for help. “I think the arts community has a tendency to stay within themselves and to really live in a world of their own,” he said. “They need to break out of that. They need to understand the real world of politics.”

Politicians are openly skeptical of whether artists and arts groups are equal to the task of adapting to Congress as it may evolve on arts policy issues in the 1990s. “To date, arts groups have only been required--let’s face it--to influence a handful of members of the House and Senate,” Williams said. But the political gloves have come off in the last year and arts issues have been moved into the realm of some of the traditional high-controversy grist of the political mill.

“Now, I assume it has occurred to them (arts leaders) that they have 535 people they have to influence if they are to avoid worsening government censorship,” Williams said. “Are they up to it? I don’t see signs that they are.”

* Washington Profiles: A look at the leading art advocates in Congress. Page 101.