Public figures, bloggers, and journalists from the left and right unite behind an idea I think is long overdue...

An Open Letter to Our Fellow Americans

February 3, 2010

We live in a world that increasingly demands more dialogue than monologue. President Obama’s January 29th question-and-answer session with Republican leaders gave the public a remarkable window into the state of our union and governing process. It was riveting and educational. The exchanges were substantive, civil and candid. And in a rare break from our modern politics, sharp differences between elected leaders were on full public display without rancor or ridicule.

This was one of the best national political debates in many years. Citizens who watched the event were impressed, by many accounts. Journalists and commentators immediately responded by continuing the conversation of the ideas put forward by the president and his opponents — even the cable news cycle was disrupted for a day.

America could use more of this — an unfettered and public airing of political differences by our elected representatives. So we call on President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner to hold these sessions regularly — and allow them to be broadcast and webcast live and without commercial interruption, sponsorship or intermediaries. We also urge the President and the Republican Senate caucus to follow suit. And we ask the President and the House and Senate caucuses of his own party to consider mounting similar direct question-and-answer sessions. We will ask future Presidents and Congresses to do the same.

It is time to make Question Time a regular feature of our democracy.

Please join us by signing the Demand Question Time petition.

Cutting Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America grant programs at the National Park Service. Save America’s Treasures program was started to mark the millennium and was supposed to last for two years. Both programs lack rigorous performance metrics and evaluation efforts so the benefits are unclear.

Update: The National Trust for Historic Preservation responds to the budget announcement:

Not since the 1980’s has there been such an assault on the programs that protect America’s heritage. Since 2000, SAT has been the federal government’s most successful tool to preserve the important places that tell our nation’s story. Due to the broad, bi-partisan Congressional support it has on the Hill, the program has saved over 700 of America’s most significant places in all 50 states, supporting jobs and economic development in every single project it covers. 

Read more at the National Trust website.

This social map illustrates what PCAH members have in common, from Harvard University to the Aspen Institute to Hollywood.

It’s not like being named the ambassador to London or Paris, but an appointment to the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities is one of the cushier rewards for supporting a presidential candidate. And the 26 members President Barack Obama named earlier this week seemed like a motley group, with little in common except an ability to raise campaign money. Vogue magazine’s Anna Wintour and Minnesota State Senator Richard J. Cohen? Yo-Yo Ma and the guy who made a pre-fab house that floats?

Disparate, yes. But these 26 private-sector appointees are intricately connected through years of leadership in the overlap of politics, arts and culture. Studying their resumes, some clear patterns and paths emerge. So if you aspire to discuss the future of the humanities with, among others, Michelle Obama (the honorary chair), read on. Here’s a breakdown of the committee members, their connections to each other and the spheres they influence.

An interesting social map of appointments I've found a little disappointing (i.e., no librarians, no humanities people, no visual artists).

Heavy on Hollywood and the arts... but no humanities fans?

President Obama is tapping some big names from Hollywood to serve on the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities.

Among the 25 members announced Monday by the White House were actors Edward Norton, Forest Whitaker, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kerry Washington and Alfre Woodard; CAA partner and managing director Bryan Lourd; independent film producer Liz Manne; and publicist Andy Spahn.

They join a committee that will include Vogue editor Anna Wintour, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Teresa Heinz, a philanthropist and wife of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities varies in importance from administration to administration. In the Reagan years, the PCAH was founded as a potential private-public alternative to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Some presidents just appoint a few big donors and forget about it.

It may surprise some that the Bush administration ended up with a very active and effective PCAH. The committee members were major supporters (financially and morally) of the work of the federal cultural agencies (i.e., the NEH, NEA, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services). They also fostered unprecedented cooperation among the cultural agencies to promote domestic programs and international cultural exchange.

Today, President Obama named to the PCAH an impressive group of smart-seeming actors and other bold-faced names. Several of the actors, Kerry Washington in particular, are not averse to regular trips to Washington. Of actors who show an interest in politics, these are among the most informed and intelligent.

For purposes of the federal cultural agencies, however, I see two potential problems:

I wonder how much time and energy can these people spare for something as low-profile as the PCAH? I cannot imagine the likes of Anna Wintour showing up for more than one meeting amid the moldering plaster of Room 527 of the Old Post Office.

The biggest problem I see here is that, of twenty-five appointments, there are next to none from the worlds of museums, libraries, or the humanities.

By my reading of the full list of PCAH appointees there are only two with tenuous connections outside the arts: Victoria Strauss Kennedy, an "educational consultant for Loyola Marymount University" and Jill Cooper Udall, who "works with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian."

For all the struggles faced by the artists and arts organizations in a Great Recession, they bask in wealth and glamor compared to the libraries, museums, archives, non-fiction filmmakers, and other components of the "H" in "PCAH."  Will they get any attention at all from this Hollywood crowd?

I hope so.

This report, and a text version at the Fox News website, prompted a semi-baked response that I've published here at TheOccasional.org.

My bottom line:

Fox News and the National Taxpayers Union are wrong to be kicking around in the “decimal dust” of grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities in search of wasteful government spending.