Mr. Clinton would not say whether he had anyone else in mind for Surgeon General, but senior White House officials said they would be in no rush to fill a job that has become so highly politicized. They also made it clear that the Administration was not yet done with Dr. Foster.

Speaking on the condition that they not be named, the officials said the President hoped that Dr. Foster could continue to play some role as a spokesman for the Administration, perhaps in leading the national public relations campaign against teen-age pregnancy that the President promised in his State of the Union Message in January, and that the new Surgeon General had been expected to lead.

The White House chief of staff, Leon E. Panetta, who accompanied Dr. Foster to Capitol Hill today, would not confirm the possibility of another job for Dr. Foster. "That is something for the President to announce," Mr. Panetta said. "But he's got a lot of talent and we are not going to let it go to waste."

Dr. Foster was even more guarded about his future, saying only that among his options was returning to Nashville, where he is a tenured medical professor at Meharry Medical School. He also said the confirmation ordeal had left him battered but not bitter, and a bit wiser about politics.

"The first thing I learned was that I was a neophyte, a novice," he said at a news conference where he was flanked by the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and 11 other Democratic Senators.

Right up to the vote today, the President had fought doggedly for the nomination. But in the end, the White House could not overcome the strong opposition engendered by the abortions Dr. Foster had performed during his 38-year medical career and its own initial bumbling that gave other members of the Senate the political cover to oppose the nomination.

The nomination also fell victim to Republican Presidential politics, as Mr. Dole, a Kansas Republican, and two other Senators seeking their party's 1996 Presidential nomination, Phil Gramm of Texas and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, tried to make political points.