NEWS ANALYSIS : As Partisan Lines Harden in Senate, Level of Debate Hits Tragicomic Low : Legislators: Theatrics and bile have drowned a spirit of compromise. Some call it emblematic of capital Clinton-bashing, others cite a need for sound bites.

In the view of some lawmakers, the decorum of the Senate reached a new nadir this week, political acrimony and partisan bile having become the defining characteristics of the institution in the Clinton era.

As the Senate struggled to resolve a weeklong impasse over President Clinton’s crime legislation, its members waxed theatrical, unloosing oratory ranging from the silly to the sublime and displaying emotions worthy of classic tragedy or comedy, or perhaps both.

Perhaps the week’s most audacious performance was rendered Thursday by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), who embellished his arguments against the bill’s crime prevention programs by brandishing a large picture of a pink pig and belting out his own version of the children’s classic:

“President Clinton had a bill. E-I-E-I-O. And in that bill was lots of pork. . . .”

D’Amato’s ambitious a cappella prompted an acid retort from a normally restrained Democrat, Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey.

“It’s the barnyard all right,” Lautenberg observed. “But it’s not the pig we’re looking at. It’s the other stuff. It’s the other stuff. And if it looks like it and it feels like it and it smells like it, we know what it is.”

Some senators complained that the pitched, emotional tenor of the crime debate signals a new low in legislative etiquette and an end to the days when Republicans and Democrats would compromise for the good of the country.

Without question, congressional decorum has deteriorated sharply during the Clinton presidency as the new Administration has prodded the country in a new direction, giving greater voice to some constituencies at the expense of others and upsetting a status quo that largely prevailed for 12 years under the Ronald Reagan and George Bush presidencies.

“There’s been a sea change in politics, partisanship and people’s attitudes toward one another. It’s a living tragedy,” Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) said, his voice cracking with emotion. “We even got E-I-E-I-O.”

A number of senators attribute recent mood swings to the life-or-death implications of the crime debate. Others said that members of the chamber are merely cranky after being forced to cancel the first two weeks of a planned August recess.

Scholars said that the dramatics were merely ploys to obtain free time on national television. “It has everything to do with the television cameras,” said Larry Sabato, a professor of government at the University of Virginia.

The catchy phrases and dramatic charades were part of the senators’ competition to make the nightly network news with the most compelling sound bite, he said. This game is especially tempting for senators facing reelection campaigns this fall, since appearing on national television makes them look important and their opponents cannot get equal time. “It’s free air time,” Sabato said. “It’s worth its weight in gold videotape.”

Thursday capped an exceptionally emotional week in the Senate.

At one point Monday, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) held up a copy of the crime bill and ripped out the pages detailing the assault rifle ban, which many Republicans oppose but the President considers critical. If that part of the legislation were removed, he declared, “I will bet you I would pass this bill in 12 seconds.”

As for D’Amato, antics such as his singing performance are not new. Last year, in his battle against the President’s budget bill, he took a huge pencil to the floor and bashed it against a poster of a “Taxasaurus” dinosaur. That time he made the evening news on all three major commercial networks, Sabato recalled.

One Senate historian said that such outbursts are hardly unprecedented. While Senate rules are crafted to foster a polite, genteel atmosphere, he said, emotions have been known to peak toward the end of sessions since the founding of Congress.

“The end of the session tends to get a little punchy, agitated and humorous,” said Don Ritchie, assistant historian for the Senate. “You get emotions coming out in ways they don’t normally come out.”

Such behavior is most prevalent when lawmakers have been kept in Washington long after a scheduled adjournment day.

In the fall of 1913, the Senate was in a particularly foul mood because lawmakers were denied a summer recess and had been at work on weighty bills such as income tax legislation for eight months, Ritchie said.

Sen. Ben (Pitchfork) Tillman of South Carolina, who was fighting for the interests of the agrarian states, entered into the record a cartoon of a cow that showed farmers feeding it and Wall Street bankers milking it.

The gesture so outraged other senators that they put off their work on income tax legislation and passed a measure banning cartoons and other such graphic material from being entered into the official record.

It was clear throughout the week that eagerness to get out of Washington for at least part of their summer recess was one of the biggest reasons for short tempers among the senators. Among the tourists and congressional staffers who crowded the Senate galleries during climactic moments of the debate, the most anxious faces belonged to the families of senators, including Stewart Boxer, husband of California Democrat Barbara Boxer.

A casual conversation on a Capitol elevator between senators from opposite sides of the aisle--both of whom gave passionate speeches on the crime bill--gave a clue to the primary issue of the day.

Bumpers turned to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and asked: “You think we might get out tonight?”

“I sense it in the air,” she said.