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 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 AAF report card is a straightforward yes or no table, with six questions. Questions covered the candidates' willingness to meet and talk about policy to the tilt of their voting records on the arts.

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.

It also pointed to a distinct difference between pending pro-arts legislation co-sponsored by Obama and a nearly decade-long voting record by 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.

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

Robert Lynch, the president and CEO of the AAF, was in Palm Beach on Friday when McCain's platform hit the wires.

While Lynch lamented to some degree the brevity of the GOP senator's statement, he said he was able to announce to a conference of mayors from more than 50 key U.S. cities that the AAF finally had what it needed to give the mayors and their constituents information.

"John McCain believes that arts education can play a vital role fostering creativity and expression. He is a strong believer in empowering local school districts to establish priorities based on the needs of local schools and school districts. Schools receiving federal funds for education must be held accountable for providing a quality education in basic subjects critical to ensuring students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy. Where these local priorities allow, he believes investing in arts education can play a role in nurturing the creativity of expression so vital to the health of our cultural life and providing a means of creative expression for young people."