SUPPORT ISN'T AUTOMATIC FOR CLINTON IN CONGRESS

Bill Clinton has climbed one political mountain this year, winning the presidency in a vote of the American people. Next year, he will face another summit that may prove just as formidable: the U.S. Congress. Though he and the majority of congressional members are of the same party, no guarantee exists that the relationship between the executive and legislative branches will be a cozy one. How President Clinton deals with Capitol Hill will certainly provide an early sign of his executive timbre.

In the history of this nation, different presidents have displayed different methods of operation in dealing with Congress. In recent times, President Johnson bullied his former colleagues on Capitol Hill. President Reagan bypassed Congress and stated his proposals directly to the American people. President Bush was more conciliatory ... and then paid the price for trying to get along. It was instinctively assumed that Bill Clinton, a Democratic chief executive after a presidential drought for his party, would land in Washington with no resistance for his programs to be found on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A local member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson of Cape Girardeau, supplies a different take on this perception. While Gov. Clinton is indeed a Democrat, the Democrats he will encounter in Congress are a fractious bunch; while they are of the same political affiliation, there is a wide philosophical gulf between the conservative attitudes of some congressional Democrats and the liberal demeanor of the House and Senate leadership. Emerson points out that Clinton, if he sticks to the centrist themes that won him the presidency, will likely find early and frequent disagreements with more left-leaning sorts like House Speaker Tom Foley, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

Bill Clinton served as a state's chief executive for 12 years. He knows the friction involved in dealing with the legislative branch. Foley, Gephardt and Mitchell are career lawmakers and have seen presidents come and go. All are Democrats, but their visions don't automatically mesh. If the new president forwards his belief in the line-item veto (an idea also favored by predecessors Ronald Reagan and George Bush), does anyone think the legislative leadership won't rebel simply because a Democrat now promotes it?

Any new president gets a nice honeymoon. Bill Clinton's might be better than some, part of that due to the Democratically controlled Congress. However, the system of checks and balances remains in place, and members of Congress, particularly in this era of citizen dissatisfaction and with President Clinton's meager "mandate," will not become an assembly of "yes-men" and "yes-women" simply because a Democrat leads the executive branch.