The White House and the Arts

A critic reviewing the Bush Administration’s decision to oppose any legislation that would force the National Endowment for the Arts to police the content of the works it funds would give the White House high marks for integrity and clarity of purpose. A good critic might also note the compelling simplicity of the principle implicit in the Administration’s stand, that freedom of expression is the rootstock upon which all other forms of liberty flower.

The White House position was outlined by NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer during last week’s congressional hearings on whether to extend the endowment’s life for another five years. A small group of right-wing lawmakers and religious fundamentalists has demanded that the NEA be forbidden to fund any art considered obscene or sacrilegious. As examples of such offensive work the group most frequently cites photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, though recently its chief spokesman, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), also has attacked NEA grants to writers he says are homosexuals and lesbians.

By forthrightly opposing the group’s demands, the Administration has restored a sense of balance to the debate by recalling that only a handful of the more than 85,000 grants made under the NEA’s current peer-review procedures ever have evoked the slightest controversy.

More important, the White House has acted in the the public’s interest by giving substance to the sentiments expressed last week by Ron Silver of Actors’ Equity Assn. As he testified to Congress, the endowment has made an essential contribution “to the democratization of the arts and the cultural diversity of this country.”

Finally, by refusing to pander to Helms and other members of his own party’s so-called new right, President Bush has taken a small but important step toward some restoration of civility in national politics. The end of the Cold War has deprived Helms and his fundamentalist allies of most of the demons they once used to stoke the fires of their lucrative direct-mail fund-raising operations. Bush now has served notice that his government will not allow the National Endowment for the Arts to become a stand-in for the Evil Empire.