Bread & circuses.

TWO years ago a member of the then "revolutionary" freshman class, Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee, was keen to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. At a recent hearing on the agency, however, Mr. Wamp told NEA Chairman Jane Alexander that with the Cold War over, he wanted to see federal funds now going to science and technology redirected to the arts. Miss Alexander replied: "Wow."

Alec Baldwin, currently appearing as president of the Creative Coalition (a cameo role), must also have been wowed by the warm reception he received in Washington. There was a pep rally with Republican senators and an impromptu vox pop with Newt Gingrich --who suggested that he return next month for a get-together with the full House leadership.

It's what actors call a quick change. During the 104th Congress, freshman members formed task forces to plot the elimination of the Departments of Commerce, Energy, HUD, and Education. This year most Republicans shrink from ending an arts endowment that contributes a mere $99 million to the $9 billion that Americans spend on the arts each year. Despite a commitment by GOP leaders that funding would end this year, arts lobbyists are confident that the NEA will survive.

The GOP leadership seems to have no idea of just how serious a defeat this would be. As Gary Bauer points out, a party ostensibly dedicated to shrinking government should recognize that arts funding is easier to eliminate than almost any other federal role. "The grassroots understands that if we can't eliminate the NEA, we will never deal with the other things," Bauer explains.

In response to this fear, Bill Bennett said last week: "If one takes seriously the Republican rhetoric on the need to limit the size of government, there is simply no defense for funding the NEA." He singles out Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan for fighting a valiant battle as chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the NEA. Mr. Hoekstra has criticized recent grants, including those to a publisher of sexually explicit books. With print runs of 2,000, these include descriptions of mutilation, sadomasochism, incest, and sex between a nun and priests. Emboldened by the new political climate, the NEA defends the books as possessing artistic value.

That is one of the problems, according to Pat Trueman of the American Family Association, who was responsible for the prosecution of obscenity and child pornography in the Reagan and Bush Justice Departments. As the lone NEA opponent at a recent congressional hearing, he testified that "the NEA poses a direct threat to the prosecution, on both the federal and state levels, of obscenity and child-pornography crimes." In order to be found "obscene" under the Supreme Court's three-part test, material must lack serious artistic value. In an obscenity case, therefore, the defense can argue that similar material is funded by the NEA as "art." There need be only a few such grants a year to threaten the ability of prosecutors to win such cases.

While the GOP shamefacedly retreats, the "arts community" adopts an "in-your-face" stance. In 1995, Jane Alexander's NEA funded an "Ecco Lesbo/Ecco Homo" festival in Santa Monica which included a lesbian comedian's act called "Sex with Newt Gingrich's Mother." This was probably not discussed in the chat that the Speaker had with Alec Baldwin, and it is doubtless an unrepresentative case --the NEA's defenders always note that its controversial projects represent only a fraction of NEA grants. But why are these isolated incidents never attacks on Democrats?

Can it be that such grants represent the unacknowledged bias of the arts world? Unacknowledged by the GOP, that is. The arts community makes no secret of it. Alec Baldwin has called Republicans a "virus" who during the Reagan and Bush years "really raped everybody in the whole country." He is willing to overlook this if the rapists save the NEA, but he also tells Frank Rich that those who want the agency to flourish "must elect another Congress."

Following his triumphant appearance on the Washington boards, Baldwin hosted the Creative Coalition's fundraiser in New York, honoring Whoopi Goldberg, Hillary Clinton, Mario Cuomo, and Geraldine Ferraro. Larry Jarvik, author of PBS: Behind the Screen, flatly states, "The NEA funds the left, they don't fund Hilton Kramer. Why not give $99 million straight to the DNC and cut out the middleman?"

BILL Bennett draws the appropriate lesson: that failure to eliminate the NEA would symbolize a GOP that is in full retreat ideologically as well as politically: "Is there a planet occupied with more people who disagree with us than the arts planet? If we agree on the proposition that 'It's the culture, stupid,' who do Republicans think is responsible for that?" Bennett is echoing the late Sir Kingsley Amis, who thought government funding encouraged the production of bad art -- art that is self-absorbed, makes a fetish of obscurity, and addresses a coterie rather than the public. As a result, he argued, the really rare thing in the subsidized art world is not a new piece of music, but its second performance.

Conservatives need that kind of sophistication and self-confidence. For the moment, however, all they need is the courage to insist that a deal be kept. In the last Congress, the House leadership worked out a compromise: lower funding for two years so that the NEA could plan its own privatization. Now, Majority Leader Dick Armey, who has long opposed arts funding, explains that this deal is unenforceable without 218 votes.

Conservatives stuck to this deal by supporting arts funding for two years. Now Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma wants to hold his liberal colleagues to it. He believes that continued funding of the NEA represents a betrayal of the '94 elections, not just a battle over one agency. "It's about integrity, commitment, and leadership," Largent declares.

Conservatives say: "Wow."