Small wonder the chronic inadequacy of Clinton's remarks have made the prospect of censure more likely.

Legal pedantry may work when you are talking to a jury. And soulful dissembling may work when you are preaching to a choir.

But like a cheap set of curtains, Clinton's rhetorical drapes are increasingly transparent. As the mutterings in Congress suggest, they are increasingly tattered, too.

There is a loosely held adage in modern American politics that for a president to seem truly presidential, he must travel abroad - away from the cynics, the constant barrage of negative television news coverage, the political rivals who attack with increasing bite.

This was exactly what White House advisers had hoped and expected when they planned this trip in the late spring.

What they learned instead is that wherever on earth Clinton travels, the controversy surrounding his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky will follow close behind - from his arrival in Russia on Tuesday morning to his departure from Ireland last night.

To be sure, Chernomyrdin is in a tough battle for confirmation and Russia's internal politics are little influenced by outside forces.

But it was clear that Russia's leaders either were not listening to Clinton's lectures or did not fear the effects of defying him.

As Clinton returns to Washington after almost three weeks out of town, the impending delivery of Starr's report to the election-year Congress is all but certain to dominate the White House's agenda.

Some of his advisers are convinced that independent counsel Starr will now see fit to spell out not only the times and places of the sexual encounters but also explicit details in order to charge that the president knowingly lied in his Jan 17 deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit and that he engaged in acts that were covered even by his own interpretation of the Jones case's definition of sexual relations.

"The report is going to be blistering," said one Clinton adviser.