NEWS ANALYSIS : NEA May Not Escape the Senate Unscathed Despite Stand by Bush

A U.S. Senate subcommittee begins hearings today on renewal of the National Endowment for the Arts’ legislative franchise with the future of the federal arts agency significantly influenced by one short press conference statement by President Bush.

Understandably, the nation’s arts community reacted with glee--and the arts endowment’s conservative opponents with dismay--to Bush’s unequivocal statement of opposition to legislation setting the NEA up as the government’s arts censorship agency or forcing the endowment to impose content standards on works it supports.

But political and arts observers in Washington and across the country--speaking over the last four days--generally agreed that, while Bush’s support for the NEA’s creative independence gives wavering Republicans in the House and Senate valuable political cover, the agency’s political problems are by no means fully resolved.

In fact, the pace of anti-NEA mail to congressional offices from letter-writing and post card-sending campaigns sponsored by right-wing groups--already hitting avalanche proportions--apparently stepped up this week. Some observers--especially in the House--say the arts agency still faces serious difficulties if it is to escape the legislative reauthorization process unscathed.

“I’ve got to tell you, my mail is running 25-to-1 against” the NEA within the last few days, said Rep. Fred Grandy (R-Iowa) and himself a former stage actor and star of the “Love Boat” television series. Grandy, generally counted as among the arts endowment’s key Republican supporters, added that his mail has become so heavy that “I’m counting by the wheelbarrow now.”

At issue is a sequence of two developments last week that occurred, according to sources in the House and Senate, with little or no warning from the White House to Republican congressmen or the congressional leadership of either party. First, last Wednesday, NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer announced at a House subcommittee hearing on renewal of the arts endowment that the Bush Administration supports a bill completely without any statutory language restricting the kind of art the NEA can support.

The issue of art-regulatory language arose last year when Congress, in the NEA’s 1990 appropriation bill, adopted wording discouraging the endowment from funding obscene works of art with no transcendent artistic merit. The action came as a result of an intense controversy over NEA support of two art exhibitions that contained controversial photographs--one involving a crucifix immersed in urine and the other including a series of sexually explicit male images.

Then on Friday, at a White House press conference for regional reporters, Bush was asked about his position in the NEA controversy. While the President said he found “blasphemous” art personally distasteful--and, in his opinion, unworthy of taxpayer support--he cautioned, “I don’t know of anybody in the government that should be set up to censor what you write or what you paint or how you express yourselves. I’m against censorship.”

Reaction was nearly instantaneous. Arts supporters reacted with surprise and joy. Conservatives vowed to redouble their organized campaigns to mobilize political pressure on Congress. Right-wing organizations have served notice that, in targeted districts, incumbents who support the arts endowment will face well-organized conservative, single-issue opposition.

Some experienced lobbyists argued that the situation is too fluid for the outcome of Bush’s intervention to be clear. One lobbyist who has followed arts issues on Capitol Hill for years noted that floor votes in the House and Senate on the NEA reauthorization are unlikely before June, at the earliest. “I think it’s too early to tell,” this observer said. “I would think that, considering that the polls say that Bush is so popular, his taking a stand does relieve a great deal of pressure. But there’s just no way of telling.”

As if to underscore Bush’s newly found sense of the importance of the arts endowment issue, the White House on Tuesday--after stalling the announcement for more than two months--released the names of the final four of 12 members of a commission set up last year by Congress to review the NEA’s grant-making procedures.

Eight members had already been named by the House and Senate leadership, but the commission had been prevented from beginning its review by the failure of the White House to fill out the panel with its own nominees. The commission was originally to report its findings next month, but its term will almost certainly be extended.

Bush’s choices appeared to have ideological balance. They include John Thomas Agresto, president of St. John’s University in Santa Fe, N.M., and a former deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities who is identified as a conservative; Theresa Elmore Behrendt, of New York City, former White House liaison for the arts and humanities under President Reagan; Leonard Garment, the prominent Washington attorney who is identified as an arts-issues expert, and Charles Kinsley McWhorter, a consultant to AT&T; Co. and a member of the National Council on the Arts during the Nixon Administration.

“I don’t have a real clear sense” of how Bush’s support will affect the outcome, Frohnmayer said. “But I do sense that there is some substantial momentum here. Obviously, if there’s one person you want on your team, it’s the President. And that clear statement will be immensely helpful in drawing what the issues really are.”

Frohnmayer reportedly wasted no time in making contact with key Senate Republicans. Early this week, Frohnmayer reportedly met with Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), a key member of the Senate subcommittee that will originate the NEA reauthorization bill there. And on Wednesday, Frohnmayer was reportedly scheduled to meet with Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kans.), a moderate most arts supporters see as a key vote.

Key conservatives were also apparently equally taken by surprise by Bush’s initiative. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) did not respond to calls both on Friday and early this week seeking a statement on the significance of Bush’s activities.

On the other hand, however, “the President is not up for election this year,” said Rep. Tom Coleman (R-Mo.), the ranking minority member of the House subcommittee handling the NEA reauthorization bill. “And when you run for President, this is a minor issue. But if you’re running for Congress, this is the kind of thing somebody could want to get you with.”

“I just don’t know what will happen,” said Rep. Sidney Yates (D-Ill.), the dean of arts supporters in Congress. “I think (Bush’s statement) was a big help, but how do you predict what people like (Donald) Wildmon (head of the conservative Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Assn.) will do?”

Not only do members of Congress facing reelection this year--the entire 435-person membership of the House and a third of the 100 senators--have immediate political concerns that may temper the effect of Bush’s support for the arts endowment, but Coleman said there is a risk that the President’s strong statement supporting freedom of artistic expression may lull the nation’s arts community into a false sense of security.

“I think it (Bush’s position) boosts the bargaining position and perhaps gives some measure of support to those who feel no (statutory language restricting art the NEA can support) is appropriate,” Coleman said. “But it also might be a miscalculation by those same arts supporters who may think that, since the President says so, that’s the way it’s going to be. That’s not the way I think it’s going to work out.”

“I think that, with the President’s statement, it is not certain that the bill will come out of Congress without (restrictive) amendment,” said James Fitzpatrick, a prominent Washington arts lawyer. “But had the President been neutral, or supportive of content restriction, it’s almost inevitable that one would have had some strong limitation on the NEA’s authority.”

Fitzpatrick and observers in Congress agreed that developments of the last few days make it possible to either keep the restrictions in any new bill to the same comparatively benign language included in this year’s NEA funding bill or to substitute language giving the arts endowment power--which it does not now have--to force grant money to be returned.

At midweek, many observers agreed that the way in which arts supporters mobilize their forces to take advantage of the alteration in the political terrain engineered by Bush may turn out to be more crucial than what the President said.

The liberal People for the American Way organization said it was starting to organize a congressional mail campaign to try to neutralize the advantage already seized by conservatives. The group also reportedly plans a national advertising campaign intended to have results similar to its campaign to defeat the nomination of former U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court.

“There will be some members (of Congress) who will lobby this to death for the benefit of their right-wing constituencies,” Grandy said. “There will be endless polemics. The attitude will be that, if the President isn’t going to guard your tax dollars, someone else has got to stand up for decency and the American way.

“But as a former toiler in these vineyard, I have yet to see language that effectively regulates the imagination.”