POLITICS : Congressional Deal-Maker Proudly Navigates Middle Ground : John Breaux is among vanishing breed of lawmakers who can sort through the legislative din to make things happen.

If you want to see what floats, says Sen. John B. Breaux, you just have to keep throwing things on the water.

In the past few weeks, the Louisiana Democrat has tossed out four entirely different approaches to health care reform: First, he supported a plan that bets almost entirely on the free market. He switched to a scheme that would have the government require most employers to provide health insurance. Then he embraced a proposal that might have the government impose the so-called employer mandates. Now he favors a plan that does none of those things.

To put it politely, Breaux is flexible.

He is also, at this stage of the game, indispensable. To President Clinton. To his fellow Democrats. To everyone who wants action this year on health care reform.

The opening rounds of any major debate over national policy belong to the big thinkers, to the leaders with broad vision, to the politicians who can sound trumpet calls and stir popular sentiment. The experts and policy architects come next, drafting blueprints for new systems and institutions. Others also play their roles--from critiquing the plans to mobilizing the interest groups for and against.

But late in the game, often with disaster at hand, the likes of John Breaux take center stage.

In business, Breaux would be a “closer;” in chess, a master of the end game. In Congress, he represents a vanishing breed of legislator: those with the knack for threading their way through the purists, the ideologues, the unbending partisans, the special interests and political rivals to make things happen.

“I see myself not as a philosopher, but somebody who is interested in making government work,” he said. “More and more people in Congress . . . have an all-or-nothing attitude. All-or-nothing attitudes generally wind up getting nothing.”

With both the Congress and the presidency in the hands of Democrats, the era of gridlock was supposed to have ended. But this calculation did not take into account the array of special interests that can still bring the legislative machinery grinding to a halt on a question as complex as health care.

Enter the 50-year-old Breaux, who--more than anything--is in it for the deal. And he is extraordinarily good at putting himself into the middle of one.

“As a rule of thumb, if you want to know where things are going to end up, just check where John Breaux is standing,” said Lawrence O’Donnell Jr., the Senate Finance Committee’s top Democratic staffer.

Breaux rarely involves himself in the minutiae of legislation. He often turns unabashedly to staff members for answers to even the most basic questions about a proposal he is pushing.

He happily admits to being a dabbler and concedes that he knew almost nothing about health care--until recently. “But I like the process. I like being involved in trying to legislate and reach agreements,” he said. “I’m going to do some other issues. I’m going to do welfare next.”

Last week Breaux and his latest set of allies--a small band of conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans on the Finance Committee--stumbled through a series of complicated and unwieldy alternatives before coming up with a health care plan that falls short of meeting Clinton’s bottom line of guaranteed health coverage for every American.

Nonetheless, they somehow achieved their goal: They got the process going again. Even the President’s staunchest supporters on the Finance Committee say they may vote for the proposal, if only to avoid the embarrassment of having no bill at all to take to the Senate floor.

Once it reaches the full Senate, yet another round of dealing will begin--and Breaux is likely to be in the thick of it once again.

Breaux and Clinton are friends and political soul mates from their days together in the moderate-to-conservative Democratic Leadership Council. Time after time, it has fallen to Breaux to tell the President that one or another of his policies would not succeed on Capitol Hill.

When Breaux warned Clinton last year that his economic-stimulus package would die unless it were preceded by deficit reduction, Clinton brushed him aside, and suffered a devastating legislative defeat.

By the time Breaux sounded a similar alarm about Clinton’s proposed BTU-based energy tax a few months later, the White House was more receptive. The Administration agreed instead to a gasoline tax, and it got one.

“On health care, I think (Clinton) is willing to compromise. I think he was willing to compromise on the jobs stimulus bill,” Breaux said.

But he adds that some of those who advise the President “fall into the same trap as some Republicans do, that they have to have it all their way or not at all. If they don’t get anything, then they have an issue, and let’s run on the issue in the next election.”

If there is not a middle ground on an issue, Breaux will make one. In May, he decided that Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) was taking a far too regulatory approach to telecommunications legislation, so he introduced a bill that would allow the Baby Bells to enter the long-distance market without restriction. “That was an extreme position . . . but I did that in order to create the middle. If you don’t have a left and a right, you don’t have a middle.”

In the modern Congress, the grand compromisers are growing increasingly scarce. That is why so many in Washington lamented the downfall of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), who had to give up his chairmanship when he was indicted on charges of corruption.

“The deal-maker is becoming as extinct as the woolly mammoth in Congress,” said Rutgers University political scientist Ross K. Baker. “It’s reassuring that the species hasn’t died out entirely.”

In large part, Breaux says, it is growing more difficult to be flexible on issues because interest groups can mobilize their forces so quickly these days.

“Being in the middle is more difficult than it used to be. . . . When I first got to Congress 22 years ago, we’d be dealing with controversial subjects and then maybe a week after, we’d start getting a letter or maybe a call,” he said. “Today because of the instantaneous communications about what Congress is doing, the special interest groups immediately activate their constituents to start lobbying.”

Not that Breaux, whose political mentor is scandal-plagued Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, holds anything against the special interests and their lobbyists. At least not those from his state.

This, after all, is the legislator who--as he held out for natural gas and sugar subsidies during the 1981 budget battle--issued a now-famous declaration that his vote could not be bought, but “it can be rented.” Already he has begun pressuring Clinton to include tax breaks for the oil industry in the health care bill.

Breaux also was a target of an expose by ABC-TV’s “PrimeTime Live” into the junkets lawmakers and their staffers take at the expense of groups that lobby them. The program featured Breaux and other senators on a lavish trip to Boca Raton, Fla., that was paid for by such corporations as U.S. Tobacco Co., Texaco Inc. and Prudential Insurance Co.

He defended it by saying he was playing in a charity tennis tournament. But such publicity was a driving force behind Congress’ recent moves to narrow the kinds of gifts members may take from lobbyists.

Yet, argues political scientist Norman Ornstein, it is the coalition-builders such as Breaux who can best keep the special interests at bay on legislation. They, he says, manage to overcome “the inordinate power of groups to block things from happening.”