NEWS ANALYSIS : Budget Resolution May Set Tone for Presidential Race : Politics: Search for accord will go far toward shaping campaign. It’s likely to decide tactics of Clinton and others.

The whole vast cycle of primaries, party caucuses, nominating conventions and campaigns--with all its twists and unpredictable turns--has not even begun. Yet the defining moment of the 1996 presidential election may well be at hand.

The American political process, normally long on indecision and delay, is entering one of those rare periods when specific events, unscripted and condensed into a relatively brief period, can exert a decisive influence over the future.

By Dec. 15 or not too long thereafter, President Clinton and congressional Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, who is currently leading the race for his party’s presidential nomination, must decide whether it is to be compromise or stalemate on the size and shape of the federal budget. At stake are matters dear to each party’s constituents, including tax cuts and wrenching changes in Medicare, welfare and other entitlement programs.

Given the volatile nature of those issues and the fact that hundreds of delegates to next summer’s nominating conventions are to be chosen in the first few months of 1996, the outcome of the budget crisis will go far toward shaping next year’s struggle for the White House.

“Normally, the shape of a presidential election develops over a fairly long period. But sometimes a series of concrete events, packed into a short span of time, become the potentially defining moment for a whole campaign,” said University of Cincinnati historian John Alexander. The current situation, he said, is similar in some ways to President Harry S. Truman’s confrontation with the GOP-controlled Congress in 1948 and the televised debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960.

This year’s search for a budget agreement will almost certainly decide the tactics of Clinton, Dole and others in the critical early rounds of next year’s campaign.

More important, whether the two sides can reach agreement may determine whether the country is treated to a traditional battle for the White House or something far nastier and more divisive.

In the end, most analysts expect a deal, in part because both Dole and Clinton have long histories of preferring compromise to confrontation.

But each faces unusual pressures that make prediction risky. For Clinton there is the widespread perception that he is a politician with no core principles, a leader who will stand up for nothing. The fact that so many voters view him that way makes fig-leaf compromises dangerous, analysts say.

For Dole, there is the danger of being outflanked in the GOP primaries by opponents on his right, principally Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas.

For most of his long career, Dole’s ability to compromise has served him well. But as his only-modest victory in last weekend’s Florida straw poll showed, his strength is not deep, and Gramm is ready to pounce on any sign of concession on the Republican revolution. Even before the contending parties reached the agreement Sunday to reopen federal agencies, Gramm was denouncing the deal, saying Dole was in danger of selling out the GOP agenda.

If compromise is reached, strategists for Clinton and Dole say, their campaign scripts are clear:

“The key point,” said Bill Lacy, deputy chairman of Dole’s campaign, “is that once an agreement is acceptable to Dole and Speaker [Newt] Gingrich, by definition it will be acceptable to the majority of party activists and members around the country.”

“Their attitude will be that Dole delivered the first real attempt at a balanced budget in Lord-only-knows how many years,” he said.

“What everybody has missed in the heat of the moment is that generally in politics when you focus on details you can gain tactical advantage in the short run, but strategic advantage goes to the candidate with the broad-brush ideas.

“The President gains short-term advantage by scaring voters and manipulating public opinion on Medicare, but in the general election Dole and the Republicans in Congress can talk of finally advancing a balanced budget.”

Former Republican Sen. Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire, a Dole adviser, said a budget deal would play to Dole’s strength--”that he can reach solutions that are palatable to the American people, which accomplish a policy objective and become law.”

“Phil Gramm cannot make that statement,” Rudman said.

Clinton strategists, on the other hand, say they would portray a budget compromise as a victory for Clinton.

If a budget agreement is reached, Clinton’s first talking point in the campaign, said a senior aide, will be, “We balanced the budget.”

“Remember Republicans have always claimed they are tougher on fiscal conservatism and spending. They’re always tarring and feathering Democrats for tax and spend. They can’t do that if they’re running against a President with a balanced budget as a notch in his belt,” the aide said.

A budget deal, added Clinton adviser James Carville, would allow the President to portray himself as the leader who supported fiscal responsibility but defended the elderly, the poor and middle-class families against Republican excesses. If there is a deal, Clinton could credibly argue that “the Republicans had a terrible budget, and I took them to the negotiating table and made it a lot better for the American people,” Carville said.

He would advise Clinton to “compare the compromise budget to the one Republicans proposed until you got a hold of it and talked some sense into them.”

“And he can argue that if you don’t reelect me, they’re going to go right back and do what they planned before--raid pension funds, make capital gains taxes retroactive, etc.,” he said.

Whatever deal is struck, Carville said, Clinton will be able to argue that it is consistent with the principles he insisted on throughout the negotiations. “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Carville said, “it just has to be consistent with the principles he pledged to defend.”

But while Clinton and Dole, both accomplished deal makers, may be able to find a compromise acceptable to both of them, they may not be able to sell such a deal to their ostensible followers in Congress.

“If you’re waging a holy war, you can’t compromise with the devil. And we are getting closer to that,” said Duane Tananbaum, a historian at the City University of New York’s Lehman College who specializes in the modern Congress and politics. “The danger of the firebrands has become clearer.”

If no agreement is reached and the Dec. 15 expiration date on the continuing resolution passed this week comes and goes, then both sides would take the budget issues directly to the voters.

Strategists on both sides do not shrink from the thought of the donnybrook that would result.

“If he can get a deal, terrific. If we can’t, then we’ll have to fight it out in another arena,” White House senior adviser George Stephanopoulos said.

Carville agreed, saying, “I couldn’t be happier with the way the White House has handled the budget issue. What’s wrong with letting the voters settle it? There’s nothing wrong with it. You want people involved in it. There ought to be public arguments about it.”

Such views reflect the White House belief, reinforced by current polls, that Clinton so far has won the battle for public opinion. For example, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday night showed that 56% of people interviewed said Clinton’s position on the budget was closer to their own while only 36% sided with the Republicans. By a 2-1 margin, those polled said the Republican budget plan cuts too deeply into domestic programs.

Numbers like that, White House aides argue, show that Clinton enters the final rounds of the budget battle in stronger shape than Republicans realize.

Not surprisingly, Republican strategists see any such gains as short-lived. They believe they could portray Clinton as an ineffectual waffler who failed as a leader.

Sal Russo, a Republican consultant based in Sacramento, argued that while Clinton is winning points in public opinion polls now, Republicans will win the argument in the long run.

“Ultimately, the President has the responsibility of running the government and if it doesn’t run very well a lot of the responsibility and burden falls on him,” Russon said.

“If there is a protracted budget dispute, I think it is a very negative thing for Bill Clinton,” he said.

Times staff writers John M. Broder and Richard T. Cooper contributed to this story.