State of Union Isolated From State of Presidency

In a strained state of disunion, President Clinton, the impeachment defendant, is due before his House accusers and Senate judges Tuesday night to tell them and the nation his proposals for the year ahead.

He can’t make the request crucial to all the rest--that he be acquitted by the Senate to complete the two years and a day until his term ends. The presumption is that he will be, for lack of the 67 votes it would take to convict and dismiss him.

Clinton said his instinct is that his State of the Union address should deal only with the people’s business, because Americans have heard enough about impeachment over his deceptions in the Monica S. Lewinsky affair.

With rare exceptions, presidents have pronounced the state of the union to be sound and strong in these ceremonious, joint-session addresses. Clinton can point to the economy, the surplus federal budget, declining crime rates and more to make that point.

The state of the presidency is another matter--never before has a president on trial for his job gone before the House and Senate for the report the Constitution requires.

Andrew Johnson, the only other president ever impeached by the House, sent Congress two written messages in 1868, both after his Senate acquittal. Beset by Watergate, Richard M. Nixon said in his 1974 State of the Union address that he had no intention of resigning. Impeachment accusations were lodged against him later, and, facing conviction, he quit.

As schedules stand, Clinton’s defense attorneys will be making his case in the Senate trial by day on Tuesday, with the president to present his 1999 agenda hours later to Congress and the leaders of government in the House chamber, where his impeachment was voted one month before.

And on Wednesday, when Clinton plans to go to Buffalo, N.Y., and suburban Philadelphia to talk about his State of the Union plans, the Senate will be reconvening his trial.

The day-and-night stress prompted suggestions, some from Democrats, that Clinton delay the address until after the Senate trial, or send Congress his proposals in writing, as presidents did until Woodrow Wilson’s time.

But with the duration of the trial uncertain, the White House wasn’t interested in waiting, and Clinton certainly was not going to sacrifice the stage that belongs to every president at State of the Union time.

It served him well a year ago, a week after the Lewinsky scandal began, when he was still dishonestly denying the affair. He did not speak of it in his address to the Congress and the nation. It was Clinton performing in his element, claiming the initiative on policy--although only a handful of his cataloged proposals ever passed.

No matter. That State of the Union address boosted his standing despite the gathering scandal. His job approval ratings soared and have remained strong through it all.

Now it will be prime time for the impeached president, to boast of what he calls an American economic renaissance, to talk again of Social Security financing for the future, to renew his proposals for education aid, health care guarantees and an array of other measures.

He has been previewing them for weeks--as the trial began on Thursday he recommended a five-year, $6-billion plan to help hire new police officers, concentrating on high-crime areas. The day before, it was new aid for the disabled; the day before that, $1 billion for land conservation.

Clinton also has outlined proposals for increased defense spending, tax breaks for long-term care of the elderly and disabled, more help for the homeless, and after-hours school programs.

Those buildup proposals are standard; Clinton has used them yearly as a way to set his agenda first, before Congress gets going. But for impeachment, the Senate would have recessed, as the House has, until State of the Union day.

But little else is standard this year. Presidents usually can hold center stage the morning after. But on Wednesday, the Senate trial will resume.

“I don’t think the president has the ability to be distracted,” his spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said.

But there has never been a distraction like this for him or for Congress.

Walter R. Mears, vice president and columnist for the Associated Press, has reported on Washington and national politics for more than 30 years.