Whitman was as explicit in defense of the body as a vessel for metaphor as Ms. Finley, Mapplethorpe or Mr. Serrano. Since this message is both powerful and logical, since it is patriotic to the core, since it justifies supporting living rather than dead artists, I can only conclude that we fail to play our winning card because we're scared half to death by the unending avalanche of insults from the far right. ''I feel like a welfare mother,'' the painter and conceptualist Lucio Pozzi once told me. But the welfare mothers excoriated by politicians in the 80's had no army of articulate retainers nearby. They were scapegoats during a period of enormous budget deficits. We're on the edge of a very different period.
Budget surpluses are back.
The long-dormant moderate wing of the G.O.P., friendly to the Endowments, is now born again. The ''information industry,'' which depends upon creativity and imagination, is the red-hot engine of this economy. Privacy Information Stay connected to the news that interests you with free e-mail alerts from The New York Times.