CLINTON-REPUBLICAN ENMITY COULD EXPLODE ON TELEVISION.

Byline: Robert A. Rankin and David Hess Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Last year the swaggering new Republican Congress contemptuously booed President Clinton during his State of the Union address.

Tuesday night, after a year of bitter partisan stalemate that crippled the government and soured the voters, both sides will try to mute their mutual hostility when Clinton enters the GOP lions' den again for this year's speech.

That's the plan, at least. But don't be surprised if GOP hostility surfaces.

These people don't like each other. Just about every time Clinton has spoken publicly about Republicans recently, GOP lawmakers have exploded in anger. Last year's boos could easily become this year's howls of outrage.

Clinton intends to present himself as a leader looking beyond mere partisan politics to an "age of possibility," according to White House aides. He will challenge the American people - and Congress - to join him in a search for "common-ground" solutions to the great problems confronting the nation as it approaches the 21st century.

Beneath his lofty rhetoric, however, Clinton also will be unofficially using the prime-time podium to open his '96 re-election campaign. He will praise his own achievements, claiming credit for economic expansion at home and peace abroad.

His most delicate challenge will come when he tries to persuade the viewing public, without seeming too partisan, that Washington's spectacular failure to balance the federal budget is not his fault, but rather, the result of Republican intransigence.

How could he possibly pull that off?

"I think he will invite the Congress on Tuesday night to celebrate the victory that's already at hand, if the Republican majority will just seize the moment," said White House press secretary Mike McCurry.

That's when you are most likely to hear catcalls and jeers. Republicans reject Clinton's budget offerings as little better than fraudulent. And for all his talk of common ground, Clinton most likely will not miss the opportunity to remind voters that he is the defender of popular programs such as Medicare and environmental protection against GOP efforts to limit them.

The speech, in short, will put Clinton on the high wire between two audiences - the public at home and the lawmakers in front of him. Pitch himself too hard to the public, and Republicans may rebel in an ugly partisan spectacle. But if he muffles differences with the GOP too much, he blows a golden opportunity to define how he differs from them at the start of the election year.

"I think he's going to make a fairly political speech, hitting his issues about protecting Medicare and Medicaid and preserving middle-class programs," said freshman Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla.

"We'll try to point out that we're not cutting these things but only slowing their growth," Foley said. "I hope that, once he makes his partisan points, he'll also then be conciliatory rather than so argumentative, and maybe then we can all start behaving more like adults and try to work out some agreement."

If an agreement is not worked out by Friday, part of the federal government could shut down again, for that's when the latest temporary funding measure will expire.

Despite that threat, Clinton does not plan to dwell on the budget impasse.

"This is a speech that will in a sense rise above that, talk about the challenges that much more direct affect the daily lives of the American people," McCurry said. "So don't expect the president to don a green eyeshade and stand up there and attempt to negotiate the budget with the Congress in front of him."

Instead, McCurry said, Clinton will stress a "much more thematic discussion of the state America is in as it prepares for the 21st century, as opposed to a compendium of legislative proposals, the president being realistic enough to understand that with a Republican Congress, a laundry list of legislative items is not likely to attract much positive response. . . ."