SOUTH BARRINGTON, Ill. - In starkly personal remarks about his moral failings and spirtual revival, President Clinton yesterday apologized anew for the sex scandal that nearly toppled his presidency two years ago and said voters must not hold Vice President Al Gore responsible for sins that weren't his.
''Surely, no fair-minded person would blame him for the mistakes I've made,'' Clinton told a gathering of evangelical ministers in a session beamed by satellite to 11,000 Christian leaders around the world.
The remarkable event seemed to be a mix of spontaneous reflection and purposeful message-sending. Clinton spoke four days before he is to give a valedictory address celebrating his record at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, and he seemed eager to directly address the most prominent blot on that legacy.
Some Gore loyalists, long fearful that the vice president will be hurt by public perceptions of a low moral tone in the White House, had hoped that he would use that occasion to send a message of contrition similar to what he delivered yesterday. Clinton, aides said, has no intention of doing that in Los Angeles.
In suburban Chicago yesterday afternoon, however, he guided his audience through a discursive public tour of his inner life. In confessional tones, he talked about the pastoral counseling sessions he began two years ago after admitting his sexual relationship with former intern Monica S. Lewinsky and professed to ''feel much more at peace than I used to.''
Apparently referring to a pattern of adulterous behavior, Clinton said that having to publicly acknowledge guilt was liberating. ''I think that as awful as what I went through, humiliating as it was - more to others than to me, even - sometimes when you think you've got something behind you and then it's not behind you, this sort of purging process, if it doesn't destroy you, can bring you to a different place,'' he said.
''I'm in the second year of a process of trying to totally rebuild my life from a terrible mistake I made,'' the president continued. ''I don't think anybody can say, `Hey, the state of my spiritual life is great, it's constant, and it's never going to change.' I think I've learned enough now to know that's not true; that it's always a work in progress and you just have to hope you're getting better every day. ''
Clinton was speaking at the Willow Creek Community Church, whose pastor, Bill Hybels, is one of the clergymen whom Clinton meets with at regular White House sessions. Clinton's remarks came in answer to questions from Hybels.
White House aides said that Clinton agreed to Hybels' request for an appearance several months ago, but many of them were decidedly unenthusiastic when they realized earlier this week how public the event would be. They acknowledged, however, that Clinton may have been eager for an opportunity to address concerns that his behavior was a liability for Democrats.
A sense of being under siege seeped into Clinton's remarks today; at one point he referred to his problems being ''played out with several billion dollars of publicity on the neon lights before people.''
But he said the adversity forced him to confront his failings. ''It may be that if I hadn't been knocked down in the way I was and forced to come to grips with what I'd done and the consequences of it, in such an awful way, I might not ever have had to really deal with it a hundred percent.''
The wide-ranging discussion touched on theology, politics, and science. Clinton recapped some of the important moments in his presidency.
The low points, he said, beyond his personal crisis over Lewinsky, were the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City and losing 18 American soldiers who were trying to quell factional strife in Somalia.
His greatest moments? Winning passage of the deficit reduction act in August 1993 and a month later, hosting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, as they shook hands for the first time on the White House lawn. It was, he said, ''an unbelievable day.''
