Clinton Piles Up Record Legislative Wins : Congress: Two studies find his batting average is highest of any first-year President in modern history. He may better L.B.J.’s 1965 successes.

He won office with support from less than half the electorate and for most of the year his approval rate in the polls was less than 50%--hardly the sort of public mandate that would intimidate the barons of Capitol Hill.

Within days of his inauguration, a controversy over gays in the military threw his agenda off track and exposed his inexperience and naivete.

He suffered a humiliating defeat on his stimulus package and rescued the rest of his economic agenda by the barest of margins.

And now he faces the possibility of a crippling setback over free trade with Mexico.

Yet Bill Clinton’s batting average with Congress--his ability to get his legislation passed--is the highest of any first-year President in modern history, according to at least two recent studies.

One survey examining Clinton’s success in getting congressional approval of controversial legislation found that he is scoring a higher winning percentage than Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1965. That year marked the zenith of Johnson’s power and is generally regarded as the high-water mark of the modern presidency’s influence over Congress.

That Clinton’s overall record should get lost in the day-to-day news of conflict and setbacks is a sore point with the Democratic leadership in Congress. “It says something about all of us, including the fact that in the American political process, much more attention is paid to defeat and controversy than to success,” said Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.).

“Obviously, perceptions and reality don’t always mesh,” added Texas A&M; University political scientist John R. Bond, author of one of the studies.

Congressional Quarterly magazine, analyzing all congressional roll call votes through Sept. 14, found that, when Clinton took a stand on legislation, he got his way 88.6% of the time. It marked the highest first-year success rate since Dwight D. Eisenhower entered office in 1953, the same year in which began its surveys.

But many of those votes were on non-controversial matters. To get a more precise gauge of Clinton’s success on issues that faced significant opposition in Congress, Bond and Richard Fleischer of Fordham University discarded all votes in which more than 80% of the House or Senate sided with Clinton, and discovered an even more dramatic result.

By their analysis of “conflictual” votes through Sept. 22, Clinton won 91.3% of the votes in the House and 92.6% in the Senate.

If Clinton continues that streak through the rest of the year, Bond said, he could better the record of Johnson in 1965, when the Texas Democrat capitalized on his landslide victory and insider’s grasp of Congress to push through his social agenda. That year, Johnson won 90.7% of the House votes and 89.4% in the Senate.

Wyoming Sen. Alan K. Simpson, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican and one of Clinton’s most dogged adversaries, said that he was not surprised by the findings of the two studies, which appear to indicate that years of Washington paralysis may have come to an end.

“This is not gridlock. This is very productive activity that we’ve been involved with,” Simpson added. “As to whether that’s good legislation or not, nobody’s asked that.”

Nor do the voting tallies fully reflect Clinton’s struggles on Capitol Hill.

Some of Clinton’s stumbles--such as his defeat in trying to lift the ban on gays in the military--occurred well before the issue made it as far as the House or the Senate floor. And in other areas--keeping his campaign promise to lift the ban on federal funding of abortion, for example--Clinton has simply opted not to press the issue in the face of entrenched congressional opposition. Instead, he has vowed to address it in health care reform.

Clinton’s biggest asset was the simple fact that he was the first Democrat to take the White House in 12 years--and a natural political ally for the Democratic Congress. Lawmakers loaded the legislative pipeline with bills that it had approved over and over again but had been unable to get past Republican presidents.

“They trotted out almost every painful thing they’ve been thwarted on,” Simpson said.

Family leave legislation, a new law requiring states to allow people to register to vote when they get their drivers’ licenses, looser restrictions on political activities by federal employees--all had fallen under President George Bush’s 46 vetoes, and all were signed into law by Clinton.

Congressional Democrats and Clinton also are of like minds in such once-contentious areas as China policy and fetal tissue research. Legislation on both fronts had been killed for years under Clinton’s predecessors.

Clinton also has an inclination to compromise that helps explain why his relationship with Congress is smoother than those of Jimmy Carter, the last Democratic President.

“If you’re willing to let Congress define your position, it’s pretty easy to win,” said David M. Mason, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Congress Project.

Clinton won his most crucial test of the year--last summer’s budget votes--only after allowing Congress to make key changes in the plan, Mason said. “The alterations were every bit as substantial as Congress made to the (Ronald) Reagan and Bush budgets.”

Not surprisingly, Howard Paster, head of Clinton’s legislative operation, offered another view of the President’s flexibility. He insisted that, when Clinton has compromised, it has been on details, rather than issues of principle or basic objectives.

“It may go to picking one’s fights with some care,” Paster said. “You lose the BTU tax, but you don’t come off an energy tax.”

Even tougher battles, such as health care, lie ahead, and most analysts believe that Clinton’s batting average is certain to fall.

But they also say that Clinton will continue to maneuver whenever he can to claim victory. Indeed, he already is making changes in his health care legislation to meet congressional objections to the initial draft.

“This is a President who wants to win, who wants to accomplish things,” said political analyst Thomas Mann of the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution. “He’s going to be doing the negotiating and the compromising it takes to win.”