NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Needs State of the Union to Jolt a State of Motion : Speech: Since Congress recessed, the President has waded into a bog of bothers. Tonight he hopes to pull ahead on health care and other priorities.

President Clinton, who takes the short ride from the White House to the Capitol tonight to deliver his State of the Union address, is a man in search of momentum.

He needs it badly to realize his ambitious agenda for the coming year, which centers on the plan to remake the nation’s health care system and also includes an effort to renew the country’s violence-torn spirit and other initiatives.

The Administration ended 1993 with a flurry of legislative successes, from an unexpectedly strong victory on the North American Free Trade Agreement to a satisfying defeat of Republicans and the National Rifle Assn. on gun control.

In the nine weeks since Congress adjourned, however, Clinton has been hit with new revelations about his private life. He has been compelled to acquiesce in the appointment of a special counsel to investigate his involvement in the Whitewater development deal. And, after a largely upbeat round of summitry in Europe and the former Soviet Union, he was forced into an embarrassing scramble for a new defense secretary when Bobby Ray Inman bailed out with a blizzard of bizarre accusations.

Along the way, the sense of urgency and public pressure for change that helped bring Clinton victories last year has seeped away.

Personally, his popularity appears undented. His 55% approval rating in the latest Los Angeles Times Poll is as high as at any point in his presidency since shortly after his inauguration a year ago.

But his legislative wish list pushes the limits of the possible, especially in a congressional election year. He wants to reform the health care and welfare systems, win more aid for Russia, stiffen penalties for crime and put more police on the street, and overhaul the rules of campaign finance and lobbying.

At the same time, he confronts a tightening budget, with some in his own party calling for further spending cuts.

The recent setbacks have taken a toll on Clinton’s political fortunes on Capitol Hill, where he cannot count on his own majority party for unwavering support for initiatives that drive wedges between the party’s ideological wings.

Nowhere is the deterioration of the Administration’s position more clear than on health care reform. As last year’s congressional session closed, a consensus seemed to be forming that major changes were inevitable. Now that is far from clear.

Democrats in Congress appear to be laying the groundwork for something far less comprehensive. “We’re not going to do the Clinton plan,” one senior Democratic congressional aide said bluntly. “The Clinton plan is terrifying to legislators and it is terrifying to the public.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), whose panel has principal jurisdiction over health care reform in the Senate, delivered what is perhaps the deepest wound by echoing GOP contentions that the nation’s health system is not in crisis after all.

Republicans, meanwhile, have become emboldened in their criticisms.

As recently as last September, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) was endorsing a GOP-sponsored health care proposal that is almost as sweeping as the President’s and warning that his party would suffer if it was perceived as a roadblock to reform.

While Dole still officially supports the broadest Republican proposal, he also is sponsoring a much narrower one. “The more (lawmakers) learn about how vast this change would be, I think they are going to come back here saying maybe we ought to slow down a little bit,” Dole told a group of reporters last week.

Clinton’s allies hope he can quickly regain the form that led to his victories on the budget, gun control and NAFTA.

“If you look back at the highlights of his first year, his greatest successes occurred when he was able to generate the kind of public attention and support for his policies that moved the Congress,” said Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), a member of the Senate Democratic leadership and the Finance Committee.

Tonight, Clinton will try to do it again.

He plans to use the occasion of the set-piece State of the Union speech to re-establish himself as the tribune of the embattled middle class by delivering a message of moral rebirth, according to White House officials.

George Stephanopoulos, senior adviser to the President, said the speech would be both programmatic and thematic. Clinton’s plan for the coming year is to seize the high ground on health care, crime, welfare and other pressing social issues and leave the legislative log-rolling to lesser officials and congressional leaders, Stephanopoulos said.

“The main focus will be that we are making progress, renewing the country and keeping the commitments we’ve made,” he said in an interview. “You have to remember this is really his first State of the Union and he will use the chance to talk about the journey he’s been on with the American people since the election and report to them on what he’s done as well.”

In addition to focusing new attention on health care and other priority topics, Clinton will try to use the speech to defuse a potential controversy over delay of his welfare reform proposals to allow his health care program to take the lead.

Fearful that it would alienate liberals it needs for the health reform vote, the Administration had held back on the welfare package that, among other changes, would put a deadline on how long recipients could draw benefits. In recent days, however, complaints about the delay from Republicans and some Democrats--most notably Moynihan--have prodded the Administration back toward faster action. Clinton will emphasize that he plans to submit welfare reform legislation by mid-April, giving Congress time to vote on it this year.

But the shift is partially rhetorical. Administration officials are sticking with their insistence that Congress first work on health care, which Clinton believes is the more urgent problem. And while congressional leaders say that action on welfare will be possible this year, others are skeptical.

Stephanopoulos, pointing to poll results that show little loss of support for Clinton since mid-December, said that he did not believe that the White House needed to regain momentum after a difficult month.

“That’s not really fair,” he said, noting that Congress had been out of session so that Administration bills could not move forward. He described Clinton’s summit meetings in Western Europe and Russia as successful, adding that “people think the President is doing a pretty good job.”

But Republican pollster and political analyst Frank Luntz argues that Clinton’s political prognosis is mixed at best.

He says Clinton enters the new year with five chief strengths and five offsetting weaknesses. The advantages: his empathy for common people, his communication skills, an economy that is improving with little government intervention, a strong team of political advisers and White House leadership on the health care issue.

His shortcomings, in Luntz’s view, are questions about his character and integrity, a string of broken promises to middle-class voters, a poor record on foreign policy, lack of a comprehensive anti-crime package and public doubts about the Administration’s health care plan.

Yet with Clinton’s come-from-behind victories last year on the budget, NAFTA and gun control, his opponents in Congress have learned the power of the President’s sheer determination to win.

“That which he had to do, he did very effectively,” said former GOP Rep. Bill Frenzel, who assisted the White House on its NAFTA effort. “Having shown that he can win those tough ones, nobody’s going to underestimate him for a while.”

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.