Gore’s Desire for Top Job Calls for Tact : Presidency: He gets off to an awkward start as Clinton appears to ignore him. But they are reported to have solidified a working relationship.

Al Gore was puzzled, to put it mildly.

Bill Clinton was preparing for his first post-election press conference the following day and he still had not invited Gore to join him.

This slight--or was it an oversight?--was unsettling, coming only a week after a campaign in which the two men repeatedly promised to work as partners. But some discreet, high-level staff work quickly straightened things out.

As Clinton strode into the sun-drenched Old Statehouse in Little Rock the next day, there was Al Gore, barely a half-step behind the boss. And there, a near-motionless Gore stayed for the next hour, his arms dangling stiffly at his side as a confident Clinton fielded question after question, seemingly oblivious to the vice president-elect.

Before the nationally televised press conference was over, the barbs began: Al Gore is so wooden he gets his annual checkups at the National Forest Service--from a tree doctor. Even his top staffers guffawed at that one.

But the aides got a jolt when they shared it with Gore, who is known to let his hair down in private--balancing spoons on his nose, donning bloody vampire teeth on Halloween, even occasionally poking fun at his own stiff image.

“Funny, huh!” a stone-faced Gore snorted, icily turning away.

In the weeks since then, if the former Tennessee senator has not entirely put an end to such derision, he appears to have solidified his working relationship with Clinton. Day after day, as the President-elect went about the task of forming a government, Gore sat at his elbow, debating the pros and cons of each job candidate, pushing some, opposing others.

Among those close to Gore who have been named to senior jobs in the new Administration are Carol Browner, a former staff member in Gore’s Senate office, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; John H. Gibbons, head of the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, as White House science adviser; and Bruce Reed, a one-time Gore staffer who served as Clinton’s issues director during the campaign and, starting today, becomes a deputy assistant to the President for domestic policy.

Clinton said in a Sunday television interview that Gore has played “an integral role” in the process, adding: “He’s won a lot more than he’s lost.”

The important thing, it seemed, was that Gore was at the table.

But that was the transition.

For Albert Arnold Gore Jr., 44, the true test is just now beginning.

As he took his place a heartbeat away from the presidency a few minutes before noon Wednesday, Gore embarked on a tricky balancing act for the next four or eight years. He must temper, on the one hand, his own desire to be President while, on the other, asserting himself when he needs to do so.

Gore’s ability to deftly juggle these competing demands will define not only his term in office but also his chances of becoming the unchallenged heir to the Oval Office in, say, the year 2000, when he will be 52 years old.

“It’s an awkward role to play,” said Thomas E. Mann, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, a think tank here.

Since the only constitutionally prescribed duty of a vice president is to preside over the Senate, Mann noted, “for Gore to play a meaningful, constructive role, Bill Clinton has to decide to have him play that role. Clinton is the only one who can do that.”

But given Clinton’s history of micromanagement as governor of Arkansas, his deep involvement in the appointment process during the transition, even for sub-Cabinet slots, Gore has good reason to be nervous about his future in the Administration.

To be sure, Clinton has stated clearly that he intends for Gore to take the lead on environmental and technology issues. But some longtime presidential scholars remain wary.

“This free and easy equality in the campaign just can’t be characteristic of a relationship between a President and a vice president,” said Harvard historian Richard E. Neustadt.

But among those who think that Gore has a good chance of pulling it off is James David Barber, a Duke University professor and author of “The Presidential Character.”

“Clinton is an interesting, out-reaching kind of President who clearly likes to hear what other people think. So, it would be very unusual, but I think it can work,” he said.

Mann agreed: “Gore’s first priority has to be to develop and maintain a trusted relationship with the President and make Bill Clinton happy because Clinton can make his life miserable. Clinton can drop him from the ticket the next time around. He can freeze him out of all important deliberations. He can undermine his position in the broader public.”

Gore declined a pre-inaugural interview request. But in a Times interview before the election, he conceded that, while he harbors “no illusions” about the limits of the vice presidency, he still believes that his relationship with Clinton will work--and last.

“When two people both work toward the same set of goals and those goals are larger than either one of them, it automatically produces a certain closeness and rapport,” Gore said.

Many Gore friends and confidantes insisted that he couldn’t be happier.

“It’s clear that Bill Clinton has delivered on his promise to make this vice presidency one of the most responsible positions it’s ever been,” Robert D. Squier, a veteran Democratic operative and Gore family friend, said last week. “Al seems very happy.”