OS ANGELES - Tipper Gore has never gotten over the Monica Lewinsky episode, and is barely on speaking terms with President Clinton.
The president, temperamentally unable to refrain from political freelancing, is so estranged from the Gore campaign that he found himself last weekend in the uncomfortable position of beseeching leading Democratic lawmakers for tips on whom Gore would choose as his running mate.
And Clinton's schedule here in Southern California in the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention was drafted without consideration to Gore's needs - and without consultation with Gore's staff.
As Clinton prepares to offer his convention farewell tonight, there is no Clinton Factor inside the Gore campaign - at least not on the personal and operational level.
But on a political and strategic level, Gore can't escape the Clinton Factor when he tries to, can't control the Clinton Factor when he needs to - and can't embrace the Clinton Factor when he wants to.
And so the story of Gore's struggle for power - the task that has trailed him from his battle with former senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey a year ago to his triumph in the caucuses and primaries of winter and spring all the way to now, the opening of the Democratic National Convention here - is his effort to untangle his destiny from that of Bill Clinton.
But not too much.
This is a tall order, even here in a corner of America where generations have come seeking a fresh start and a fresh identity.
''This is a hard trick to pull off,'' said John Bond, a Texas A&M University political scientist. ''Gore needs to get credit for the economic prosperity that has happened and convince the public that he's played a role in that, and yet he has to distance himself from the personal problems of the president.''
The maneuvers required to accomplish that are the political equivalent of performing a Tennessee square dance in a telephone booth.
Indeed, of all the case studies of the political opportunities and challenges inherent in the vice presidency - from Richard M. Nixon's struggle for an enthusiastic endorsement from Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960 to Hubert H. Humphrey's struggle for independence from Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 - the difficulties faced by Al Gore in his effort to succeed Bill Clinton in 2000 may be the most trying, the most agonizing, perhaps even the most tragic.
It involves respect - and resentment. It involves loyalty - and betrayal. It involves soaring public popularity - and profound public distaste.
It is marked by the tensions inherent in the complex relationship of a calculating man, Clinton - whose political style seems completely intuitive - and an intuitive man, Gore - whose political style seems completely calculated. It is the story of the frayed ties between a man accustomed to following as he struggles to learn how to lead, and a man accustomed to luxuriating in the limelight as he wrestles with the humbling prospect of fading into the shadows. It is the chronicle of the collision of interests between a man obsessed with salvaging his legacy and one determined to win his chance.
It is the irrepressible clash of a president who, in the twilight of his term, is, as one Democratic senator put it, ''wandering, lost,'' and a vice president who, on the verge of his own nomination, still hasn't found his voice. It is the epic conflict of a man who can't let go of power - the president speaks on the phone nearly every day with William R. Daley, Gore's campaign chief - and a man who, though he formally accepts his party's presidential nomination Thursday night, still hasn't grabbed hold of the public imagination.
''In business, it's much easier for a chief executive to establish his own identity,'' says Abraham Zaleznik, emeritus professor of leadership at the Harvard Business School. ''In government, a president has to get his power from the electorate and then has to share it. There are big ambiguities in politics that aren't present in business, and Gore is right in the middle of those ambiguities.''
The contours of those ambiguities were set by one of the least ambiguous figures in American history, William Jefferson Clinton of Hope, Ark.
As the president reaches the clubhouse turn toward the twilight of his power, 55 percent of Americans approve of Clinton's job performance while only 48 percent have a favorable opinion of Clinton himself - the opposite of what is typical for a president.
And though both his last two predecessors as two-term presidents, Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, were involved in delicate maneuvers with the Soviet Union as their days in office drew to a close, Clinton nonetheless remains more at the center of action in his 91st month of power than either Eisenhower or Reagan. Just this summer, for example, Clinton was the stage manager of important negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians - even as he was attending a summit of leaders of industrialized nations.
But that is not the only reason Clinton's shadow falls on Gore.
The relationship between the two men, so firmly fixed in the public's mind today, is in reality only eight years old, an extraordinarily short period of time for two politicians who grew up in the same region, same generation, same party, and same tradition. The two are from neighboring states and have both been in politics for most of their adult lives, and yet they hardly knew each other until they came together as the Democratic ticket in the summer of 1992.
In truth, Gore, who occupied the bottom of the 1992 ticket, has always seemed part of an older cohort in American politics than Clinton. A classic political insider with a father in the Senate and his own experience in the House and Senate, Gore had run for president four years before Clinton had, and then, fatefully, passed up a chance to run in 1992.
That marked Gore - and his vice presidency.
''That set up a relationship with the president and myself where I never felt as some vice presidents have, that that should be me in the Oval Office and I could do it better,'' Gore said in a Globe interview, adding: ''And so I threw myself into it wholeheartedly without any emotional or spiritual reservations, and that made all the difference for me. It was a great and fulfilling experience - to be sure, very difficult at times, but always fulfilling.''
Meanwhile, the vice presidency itself was an office in transformation. Three of the past four occupants of the position - Walter F. Mondale, George H.W. Bush, and Gore - substantially enhanced the importance of a job that is endlessly bewitching to those who seek it but endlessly frustrating to those who win it.
Clinton made Gore a full partner, sometimes putting off a policy or political decision until he could consult the vice president. Meetings waited until Gore arrived. Decisions weren't final until Clinton could get Gore on the telephone.
The vice presidency gave Gore a role - and a role model. He helped teach Clinton some of the prosaic lessons of the capital; Clinton helped teach Gore some of the lessons of raw political performance. Gore was an avid learner, but often he was in awe of the president's skill, and often, as Clinton worked a problem or worked his way through a room, it was almost possible to imagine the gears turning in Gore's head: Why can't I think the way he thinks? Why can't I see the things he sees?
Then came the Monica Lewinsky affair, the long path toward the House impeachment, the winding trail of the Senate trial. Gore kept a brave face. Inside he was in turmoil. On the second day of the crisis he invited four journalists to his West Wing office. The tension was nearly unbearable. The vice president sat there awkwardly, almost icily, repeating that the president was his friend, that he would stand by him and stand with him.
He did. But in truth he was ''aghast'' - the word comes from a leading Democrat who knows both Clinton and Gore well - first at Clinton's recklessness and then at his refusal to acknowledge his wrongdoing. Though sickened, angry, and hurt, Gore remained steadfast, even while others in the Clinton circle, including such high-level aides and confidants as George Stephanopoulos and Dick Morris, wrote books and sought to place a distance between themselves and the president.
Of all those around the president, only Gore did not break. On the South Lawn of the White House he made the remarks that neither Clinton nor the president's Republican rivals would ever forget, his prediction that the second chief executive to be impeached would be ''regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents.'' And those who are close to Clinton believe that the president knows he is indebted to the vice president for that.
That may explain the president's extraordinary remarks last week when, in suburban Chicago, he spoke of his own failings and of Gore's presidential campaign: ''Surely, no fair-minded person would blame him for the mistakes I've made.''
Hardly anyone does. But the danger for Gore is the resiliency of the word ''scandal.''
''I doubt that when people go into the voting booth they will take Bill Clinton's personal behavior heavily into account,'' said Roger B. Porter, who was President Bush's domestic-policy adviser. ''Gore's bigger worry should be the fund-raising scandal. There his own behavior is at issue.''
But Gore's challenge here is also to make his own character and his own abilities the issue. For years he has been, in Eugene McCarthy's cruel description, somebody else's man. From this week on he must be his own man.
