Other aides say he provides continuity, follow-through and good contacts on Capitol Hill from his days as floor manager for Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House Democratic leader. Mr. Stephanopoulos says simply, "I'm doing a job that I love as well as I can."

But, not surprisingly, the 32-year-old Democrat seems somewhat chastened, or at least warier than he used to be. In his office, beneath the benevolent gazes of President John F. Kennedy on one wall and President Clinton on the other, Mr. Stephanopoulos talks only reluctantly about his personal experiences of the past few months.

"You can't believe the good or the bad," he says. "You have to take both with a grain of salt. It's not fun, but I got amazing stuff, too. It's more the swing that I can't. . . ," he says and drifts off in a rueful laugh.

He did receive a remarkable buildup from the news media: as the most visible spokesman during the transition, he became an easy symbol of the Clinton Administration's youth and self-confidence during its short-lived honeymoon.

He was one of those rare political staff members who move into the popular culture, as Lee Atwater did in early 1989 and Hamilton Jordan did in 1977. His dating habits became news.

But the Administration's relations with the White House press corps turned sour very quickly. "I like reporters, I really do," Mr. Stephanopoulos says today, then laughs as he realizes how that will sound. "I think that's a bad rap."

But when he was communications director, many reporters felt that the White House was too clever for its own good in its handling of the press, trying to go over their heads and carry the agenda-controlling techniques of the campaign into Government.