Columnist David Broder: Ratings belie what Clinton's done lately

IT IS HARD to imagine how President Clinton can push his stratospheric job approval ratings much higher. But on Tuesday night, when he delivers the State of the Union Address, he has a good chance to succeed.

Judging by the samples from the goody-bag Clinton has been handing out in speeches for the last two weeks, he will once again promise Americans not only a balanced budget, but an array of attractive mini-initiatives his polling says are sure winners with the public.

The formula worked well for him last January, when a huge television audience tuned in to see how he would fare on Capitol Hill just days after the sordid Monica Lewinsky charges had become public. He was never more poised or persuasive, and his promises were a hit.

This year, the circumstances are even more daunting, as the Senate continues the impeachment trial of the president. But it's the Republicans who are feeling the pressure -- not Clinton. If they boycott the speech, they risk being thought sullen. If they attend, but do not give him the usual welcoming ovation, they may look petty and discourteous. But if they join the Democratic cheers, they look like hypocrites while Clinton's prestige swells.

All this will make it seem as if the president is in control. But appearances are deceiving. Clinton may be the master of the opening night ceremony, but his troubles have taken a toll. This is a weakened presidency.

Last week, Congressional Quarterly (CQ), the authoritative, independent news service, looked back at the 1998 session -- the first year of Monica -- and reported, "Even without the votes that made him the first elected president in U.S. history to be impeached, Clinton's legislative year has to be scored as a failure, if the goal was to advance a policy agenda. Virtually all his major proposals died."

Ever since Dwight Eisenhower's first term, CQ has calculated the percentage of roll calls on which the president's position has prevailed. In 1998, Clinton succeeded on 51 percent of the 154 House and Senate floor votes on which he took a position. It was the sixth-lowest score in the last 46 years.

It was also, as CQ noted, lower than the sixth-year scores of Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, who also had opposition Congresses, and even lower than Richard Nixon's score in 1974, the year he was forced to resign.

White House aides point out that in the end-of-the-session bargaining over an omnibus appropriations bill, Clinton outmaneuvered the Republican congressional leadership and rescued -- with a single vote -- several of his domestic and foreign initiatives.

But the big items in his 1998 State of the Union Address, the ones that won public applause, were scuttled: a major anti-tobacco initiative; an HMO patients' bill of rights; expansion of Medicare to include younger people; campaign finance reform; a boost in the minimum wage; fast-track trade negotiation authority.

Most of those will be back on the agenda this year, but the prospects appear at least as dim. The 1997 balanced-budget agreement could turn out to be the last significant Clinton legislative achievement.

The flip side is that Clinton has managed to stymie the Republican Congress from pursuing its agenda. As Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution observed last week, "a weakened presidency has not produced a stronger Congress." Indeed, during the impeachment battle, the Republicans have seen their House majority shaved, their standing with the public slump, and Speaker Newt Gingrich and Speaker-designate Bob Livingston forced into resignation.

What we have then is a standoff, a form of gridlock characterized by struggles between a weak president and a fragile congressional majority. It's like a pro football game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Indianapolis Colts.

Mann and two Brookings colleagues, economist Robert Reischauer and foreign affairs scholar Richard Haass, argued at a seminar last week that, in a generally benign domestic and international environment, the nation has suffered no irreparable damage from this situation.

But "caretaker" government has a cost, in opportunities lost, problems left to fester and needs that go unmet. That's a far cry from the kind of government Clinton set out to lead.

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