CLINTON GIFT OF GAB COULD SAVE CAREER.

Byline: Todd S. Purdum The New York Times

He began with careful answers about his understanding of ``the whole truth.'' He ended by saying he wished he had even more time to answer grand jurors' questions. Throughout his four hours of sworn testimony broadcast Monday, President Clinton dodged and weaved, feinted and bobbed.

It was a spectacle that would have destroyed most politicians, beamed across television screens with labels warning of its explicit sexual content, and rife with details and denials. It was recorded in the most secret forum in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, then released to the world by the president's political enemies in the hope that it would damage him severely.

And yet Tuesday morning, as he has so often before, Clinton once again bobbed up, buoyed by a bipartisan - if sometimes grudging - consensus among politicians that after months of bleeding, the president finally might have had a good day.

``That's his life,'' said Alan Simpson, the retired Republican senator from Wyoming who now directs the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. ``His life is bounding from precipice to precipice like a huge mountain goat, bridging crevasse after crevasse and people shooting at him with high-powered rifles and the other side crumbling as he lands, just like in the movies.

``What's interesting to me is did anybody believe that this man would testify for four hours and not do well, when it was his decision to do it?'' Simpson asked.

Indeed, a big part of Clinton's achievement had to do with expectations. For days, allies of Kenneth Starr and then congressional Republicans - perhaps out of wishful thinking - had spread the word that Clinton had lost his cool and raged at his questioners. Instead, he held his anger mostly in check, and even seemed broken and humbled at times, as when he confessed, ``I'd give anything in the world not to have to admit what I've had to admit today.''

Master communicator

But another part had to do with Clinton himself, and with his inveterate ability to appear revealing while actually concealing, to seem to acknowledge even as he technically denies, to control the terms of discourse even at the hands of dogged prosecutors. In sum, Clinton is a master communicator and, more than any flat printed page, the monitor remains his medium.

For example, the president simultaneously testified that he considered his old friend Vernon Jordan a truthful person and that he could not remember Jordan's ever telling him that Monica Lewinsky thought the president might leave the first lady some day. Jordan testified that he told the president that Lewinsky believed just that - something no ordinary husband would be likely to forget.

But as the nation long ago learned, Bill Clinton is no ordinary man.

``He's a good confidence man,'' said William Bennett, the former education secretary whose new best-selling book, ``The Death of Outrage,'' bemoans a national moral climate that would overlook Clinton's misdeeds. ``He's good at what he does, and he wouldn't be where he is if he weren't very smart.''

And, Bennett added, ``The public likes him.''

So it does. Some overnight polls showed that the president's job approval ratings held steady or actually rose a bit, even if - as the polls also show - the public does not share his moral code, or even his highly conditioned view of what constitutes sexual relations.

``It was sort of a wash,'' said former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, summing up the prevailing view. ``He probably helped himself a little. I told my wife, He knew that was going to be made public. He was talking to the people.''

Not out of trouble

Clinton is by no means out of trouble. Some of the most important people he was talking to - House Republicans - show no signs of slowing their review of impeachment proceedings against him, and few seemed inclined to cut him any slack, much less a deal on censure or some lesser punishment.

But just as Clinton insisted that it was not his job to be ``particularly helpful'' to Paula Jones' lawyers in their sexual misconduct suit against him, he once again reminded his adversaries that he will not make things easy on them, either.

``Clinton's opponents keep yearning for the magic bullet, and they have for years, going way back before Lewinsky,'' said William Kristol, the Republican theoretician who is editor and publisher of the Weekly Standard. ``They keep hoping that some deus ex machina will arrive on stage and rid them of this horrible guy. It hasn't happened, and it's unlikely that anything's going to show up to do that work for them.''

In fact, Kristol said, ``The president is not going to surrender, and his opponents are going to have to do the hard work and persuade people to move ahead.''

The public view of the president remains profoundly split, but hardly undiscerning. An ABC News poll Monday found that nearly seven in 10 respondents who actually had watched his testimony found it evasive, although an identical number felt he was right not to talk about sexual details.

So once again, Clinton, who staked his political claim on finding a ``third way'' between liberalism and conservatism, might have found a way of squaring the circle of truth and falsehood, at least when it comes to sex. No one who watched the president's testimony could doubt that he was acknowledging that he had lied to some of his closest aides about his relationship with Lewinsky. Yet even in describing that behavior - when he was not under oath and not subject to charges of perjury - Clinton steadfastly refused to utter the word ``lie.''

Indeed, it is the politicians of both parties, who know Clinton best and have never especially liked him, who remain most sensitive to his months of misrepresentations. For Clinton has misled many of them before, in negotiations over legislation or the budget, and they are wary to their core.

``There's a history here,'' Bennett said. ``The people who are paying attention are angrier. The closer you are, the angrier you are.''