NEWS ANALYSIS : Perot Folksy, Clinton in Focus, Bush Confident : Debate: President fails to strike lightning. Democrat sounds studied but steady. Quick wit aids Texas tycoon.

With a seemingly unending stock of folksy one-liners, independent candidate Ross Perot came close to stealing the show.

But Democratic standard-bearer Bill Clinton was at least as aggressive as the maverick billionaire in Sunday night’s televised debate--and was probably the best of the three at focusing his answers and fleshing them out with specifics.

As for President Bush, the underdog Republican incumbent, he showed an air of experience and self-confidence that must have assured his supporters. But what he lacked was the imagination and vitality that many analysts felt he had to display to reverse the political tide that seems to be fast running out on his presidency.

“I thought he did a reasonably good job under the circumstances,” said University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato. “But he would have needed a miracle to turn things around after one debate, and he didn’t get one.”

In fact, some analysts argued that Bush did not do justice to his one apparent effort at a haymaker. His disclosure of plans to turn over coordination of economic policy to his White House chief of staff and closest political confidant, James A. Baker III, was so ill-defined that it lost much of its impact.

Bush failed to mention the idea in his initial discussion of his economic program, which came in response to the first question of the debate. Instead, the President waited until the evening was nearly half over before revealing that after the election he planned to tell Baker, who has just finished a tour as secretary of state: “You do in domestic affairs what you’ve done in foreign affairs . . . (be) the economic coordinator of all the domestic side.”

By contrast, Clinton devastated Bush with his best riposte of the night: a put-down of the President’s implied questioning of Clinton’s patriotism. Bush criticized Clinton’s actions as a Rhodes scholar in his early 20s, when he helped to organize anti-war protests in England and took a vacation trip to Moscow. Bush initially raised the questions in an interview with CNN’s Larry King Wednesday, but has since backed away from the Moscow charge.

After paying tribute to Bush’s military service, and to Perot’s as well, Clinton brought up the ghost of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.), whose tactics in the 1950s made his name a synonym for reckless Communist-baiting. Clinton recalled that Bush’s own father, Connecticut Sen. Prescott Bush, then a pillar of the Eastern Republican Establishment, had called McCarthy to account.

“Your father was right to stand up to Joe McCarthy,” Clinton said, staring Bush right in the eye. “You were wrong to attack my patriotism. I was opposed to the war. But I loved my country, and we need a President who will bring this country together, not divide it.”

That response earned Clinton a burst of applause from his supporters among the throng in the field house at Washington University in St. Louis. And by setting aside, at least for this one fateful encounter, the so-called character issue that has been the chief bugaboo of his candidacy, it appeared to endow him with extra confidence that helped carry him through the balance of the evening.

But if Clinton had one shining moment of triumph, Perot had a series of successes, made all the more impressive by the low expectations many had for his performance.

“Ross Perot was surprisingly palatable,” said Mark Ross, a Bryn Mawr College specialist in media and politics. “He was entertaining and on target.”

When Bush and Clinton cited their experience in government as assets, Perot countered: “Well, they’ve got a point. I don’t have any experience in running up a $4-trillion debt.”

Then, talking of the war on drugs, he said: “Talk won’t do it, folks. There are guys that couldn’t get a job on the third shift in a Dairy Queen driving BMWs and Mercedes selling drugs. And these old boys are not going to quit easy.”

Finally, after Perot had expounded on his plan to clear the corridors of Capitol Hill of all the lobbyists “with thousand-dollar suits and alligator shoes” and consign them to the Smithsonian by relying on the intelligence of the public, Clinton said: “Ross, that’s a great speech, but it’s not quite that simple.”

But for most of the evening, Perot escaped with nothing more severe than such mild rejoinders as Bush and Clinton concentrated their fire on each other.

In a sense, this first-ever three-way presidential debate managed to compress into 90 minutes the main features of 1992’s struggle for the presidency.

Bush showed off his overall experience, particularly his grasp of foreign policy. But he was inevitably at a disadvantage when he was forced to defend the economy.

“This country is not coming apart at the seams, for heaven’s sake,” Bush said at one point. “We’re the United States of America.”

As the man chiefly responsible for the stewardship of the economy, Bush probably has little choice except to make such statements, and some voters might pay heed to his words. On the other hand, Sabato pointed out, “he risks being seen as out of touch every time he describes the economy as being good in any fashion.”

And in the debate, as throughout the campaign, Bush’s performance was hindered by his tendency toward imprecision.

The President referred to the “misery index” without explaining that it is a measure of the unemployment and inflation rates combined. He also mentioned the issue of giving China “MFN” status, but failed to translate the acronym as “most-favored nation,” which amounts to trade treatment equal to that granted to U.S. allies.

“He said a number of things that were basically incomprehensible to anyone not inside the Beltway,” said Bryn Mawr’s Ross.

For his part, Clinton showed off his strengths as a master of discourse on such matters as reducing the deficit, rebuilding the infrastructure and retooling the military. But he has been reeling off most of these formulas for 12 months, since he formally announced his candidacy last fall, and to some ears his answers sounded just like that.

“At times he seemed to be tape-recorded,” said Sabato of the University of Virginia.

“I don’t think he really advanced his case,” said Roderick Hart, a University of Texas professor of communication. But as Hart pointed out, Clinton, unlike Bush, did not have to gain ground. “He was already in the lead. He didn’t misstep, and he certainly did nothing to hurt himself.”

The major unanswered question left by the debate was the future of Perot. “His homespun metaphors were engaging,” said Hart, a point over which there was almost unanimous agreement. And some Democrats expressed concern that the tycoon’s performance would boost his standing in the polls, ultimately at Clinton’s expense.

But other analysts contended that the same free-wheeling style that made Perot appealing as a debate performer would hinder him as a candidate. “I think people enjoyed him enormously,” said Sabato. “But most voters have concluded that he does not have the temperament to be President.”

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Philadelphia; Wilmington, Del., and Charlotte, N.C.

President Bush campaigns in Springfield, Pa., and Holland, Mich.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.