Pre-Election Battle Over Haiti Shaping Up in Congress : Politics: Legislators may set deadline for troop withdrawal. Democrats fear voters’ anger if intervention goes wrong and Americans suffer serious casualties.

U.S. forces may have landed in Haiti without bloodshed, but in the weeks ahead a much fiercer battle over America’s latest military intervention is likely to be fought in Congress, where lawmakers are growing impatient with what even a Democratic loyalist derisively described as President Clinton’s “crisis mismanagement.”

Indeed, no U.S. military intervention in recent years has been launched with so little congressional support--a fact plainly apparent as Democrats running for reelection in November anxiously seek to distance themselves from a foreign policy situation that many fear could become for Clinton what the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran was for Jimmy Carter, the last Democrat to occupy the Oval Office before Clinton.

It used to be that on tough issues like the use of military force, Congress looked to the President for cover.

But now, a Democratic leadership aide predicted grimly, it is from the President that most Democrats will be seeking political cover “if things go wrong and the nightly news is filled with pictures of body bags coming home from Haiti.”

For Democrats, “There is no upside to this occupation in the short run because anything that goes wrong is going to be all over the headlines and the television news, while anything that goes right between now and the election is just going to be perceived as a slow and incremental step in a policy whose objectives will take a long time to succeed,” said congressional scholar Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.

Because the aim of the U.S. occupation is to bring democracy and stability to a land as poor and violence-prone as any in the Western Hemisphere, success “will come after months or years, whereas failure, in the CNN age, could happen overnight,” a senior Democratic foreign policy analyst said.

Last year’s painful experience in Somalia, many lawmakers note, showed how quickly American resolve could dissolve in the post-Cold War era when U.S. forces are inserted into chaotic civil conflicts without a clear sense of mission or any obvious national security interest to defend.

Scenes of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by angry mobs led to abortion of the entire mission to Somalia, and now Americans have “once again been injected into an incredibly violent society, in whose combustible atmosphere it is hard to imagine that casualties won’t occur,” Hess agreed.

And if casualties occur between now and the midterm elections Nov. 8, Congress can be expected to move quickly to extricate the troops from Haiti by passing legislation to cut off the funding for their deployment, as it did in Somalia, many lawmakers warn.

As it stands, congressional support for the Haiti mission is too thin “to pass the Dover test,” said Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), referring to the Dover, Del., Air Force base where the bodies of any U.S. soldiers killed in Haiti will be flown.

“We can sustain perhaps a few casualties”--but anything more than a handful is likely to trigger a congressional panic because of the consensus that the internal strife in Haiti threatens no national security interest worth upholding with American lives, Glenn added.

“If there are casualties, you will see moves to put a time limit on the occupation,” said Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.).

Already, moves are afoot in both the House and Senate to fix a deadline for a troop withdrawal--something for which Democrats in particular would like to be able to take credit before the November elections.

In the Senate, Republican Hank Brown of Colorado said he will seek a vote on a non-binding resolution urging a withdrawal from Haiti no later than Dec. 31.

But in the House, where all 435 members are up for reelection at a time when polls suggest that voters are more inclined to vote against incumbents than ever before, Democrats and Republicans alike say they will back legislation to mandate a withdrawal.

“There is strong support for a resolution that would define the scope of the mission, include a date certain for withdrawal and deal with the War Powers Act,” conceded Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), who is keeping close tabs on his colleagues’ views about Haiti in his role as one of the Democratic leadership’s chief vote counters.

Maneuvering to preempt the Republicans, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), is already negotiating informally with the Administration to include a withdrawal date in legislation that he plans to draft next week.

To stand a chance of passing, the legislation “will have to set a time limit, but one that we hope will at least give the Administration enough time to get something done,” a committee aide said.

Hamilton has not indicated what kind of time limit he favors, but other Democrats say they would like to see U.S. troops hand over their peacekeeping duties to a multinational force and begin withdrawing by no later than next March.

One way or the other, the issue will be resolved by a vote on the floor before Congress adjourns for the year on Oct. 7, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) predicted.

But even if all goes as well as Clinton’s congressional allies hope, and Haiti does not turn into a foreign policy disaster, the confusion, drift and dizzying series of U-turns taken by the Administration have “created in . . . (their) wake a deep and dangerous estrangement” between Congress and the White House, a senior Democratic source said.

Coming after two years of divisive battles over the budget, health care reform, the crime bill and the North American Free Trade Agreement, Clinton’s handling of Haiti marks what even his closest allies on Capitol Hill privately concede is a new low watermark in his relationship with Congress.

As he prepared to go the polls to face an angry electorate for the first time since Clinton captured the White House two years ago, one Democratic congressman summed up the estrangement this way: “The honeymoon was over a long time ago, and now a lot of people are talking about a divorce.”

Former President Carter materialized during the height of the Haitian crisis to mediate the agreement that allowed U.S. troops to enter Haiti without force, but the memory of the defeat to which he led his party in 1978 has been haunting congressional Democrats like an unwelcome ghost as the midterm election approaches.

“The sense of impending doom and the demoralization is palpable,” Rutgers University political scientist Ross K. Baker said. “There is a real tendency now by Democrats to see their own President as a liability in a way that I haven’t seen since Carter’s campaign in ’78.”

Part of this reflects Clinton’s low standing in the polls as well as the fact that, after having begun in high hopes of passing health care and welfare reform, this has turned out to be a year devoid of all but a few major legislative accomplishments.

The President’s defenders note that it is unfair to saddle Clinton with all of the blame: The Republicans certainly have tried to defeat and embarrass the President at almost every legislative turn, and the media have consistently overplayed Clinton’s weaknesses while failing to give him due credit for his successes, they said.

But it is also clear that most Democrats now regard Clinton as a liability. Everyone, Baker added, “is looking at Mike Synar,” the Oklahoma Democrat and erstwhile Clinton ally who lost his congressional primary to a 72-year-old retired high school principal who spent less than $17,000 on his campaign. “Everyone is looking at Synar and saying, ‘That could be me.’ ”