Advocacy group says Obama beats McCain on arts support

The Americans for the Arts Action Fund, a Washington-based advocacy group, has issued its report card on the presidential candidates' positions on arts and arts education.

It found a distinct difference between pending pro-arts legislation co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and a nearly decade-long voting record by GOP Sen. John McCain.

Between 1993 and 2000, McCain voted nine times to cut funding for or terminate entirely the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989, McCain had also voted to terminate federal funding for art considered "indecent."

By contrast, Obama was co-sponsor of a bill, the "Artist-Museum Partnership Act," (another co-sponsor is Utah Sen. Bob Bennett) which seeks to amend the tax code to allow artists to declare the "fair market value" of their work when making gifts to museums rather than the basic costs of raw materials.

The senators' legislative records were the only solidly parallel information the AAF have had on both candidates.

The AAF report card presents the candidates' answers to six questions, which covered the candidates' willingness to meet and talk about policy and the tilt of their voting records on the arts.

McCain's formal statement, sought by the AAF since May 2007, was just a paragraph long.

The AAF sent the one-page tally sheet by e-mail to its more than 100,000 members in response to news that McCain had made public in The Salt Lake Tribune his long-awaited arts policy statement.

The McCain statement had been a missing piece in a puzzle the AAF had been needing to make its grade, said the organization's president and CEO Robert Lynch.

McCain's policy statement, four sentences long, allowed the AAF -- the organization that requested the document from both the Democratic and Republican candidate -- to put the arts positions of the two side by side for the first time and in full view of American voters.

The final overall tally was Sen. Barack Obama, 4; McCain, 2.

The report made pointed reference to Obama's early willingness to comply with the arts agency and McCain's long silence.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)