‘Tougher’ Bush Blasts Clinton Economic Plan : Politics: President claims his opponent is putting U.S. jobs at risk, calls him an opportunist and protectionist.

In the harshest speech of his campaign, President Bush on Thursday blasted Bill Clinton’s plan to collect more taxes from foreign investors as evidence that the Democratic nominee is a xenophobe and a protectionist whose inward-looking proposals would put millions of jobs at risk.

With polls now suggesting that he received limited benefit from the Republican Convention, Bush sought to replace voters’ doubts about his own economic stewardship with misgivings about Clinton, whom he labeled an opportunist and a “fear monger.”

White House officials said the sharp thematic tone of the address reflected a directive by new Chief of Staff James A. Baker III to “toughen up” Bush’s criticisms of the Arkansas governor.

“Today was the first to bring it all together,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

Singling out Clinton’s plan to collect an additional $10 billion a year in taxes from foreign-owned corporations, Bush argued in essence that if American jobs are already scarce, his rival would make them even scarcer.

“He should understand what is at stake here,” Bush said, “and if he doesn’t, let me tell him. Those are American jobs he’s playing with, those are American workers he’s putting at risk, and the American people simply won’t buy it. The proudest people on Earth have never stooped to fear mongers before, and we must not stoop now to fear mongers.”

Bush told workers and invited guests at a St. Louis police siren factory that the Clinton plan would send foreign firms fleeing with American jobs in tow and touch off retaliation overseas that would jeopardize U.S. companies like their own. His campaign later issued a statement asserting that Clinton’s plan would put at risk the jobs of all 4.5 million Americans employed by foreign-owned firms.

Speaking in cold and deliberate terms, Bush contended that his rival’s plan was motivated less by economics than by politics. “By attacking the bogyman of foreign investors,” he charged, “Gov. Clinton hopes to exploit the darker impulses of this uncertain age: fear of the future, fear of the unknown, fear of foreigners.”

A top Clinton campaign official contended in turn that it was Bush who sought “to use scare tactics to deceive the American people.”

Communications director George Stephanopoulos defended Clinton’s tax proposal as a way to subject foreign-owned companies to the same standards as American corporations. He said Bush knew that “Bill Clinton is for free trade” and charged that it was “(the President’s) own policies that have cost American workers their jobs.”

As Bush and Clinton take their campaigns into electoral battlegrounds where threatened jobs are very much on voters’ minds, the exchange opened what promises to be a fierce fight over the effect of trade, taxes and the environment on the crucial issue of jobs.

The White House signaled Thursday that it would likely place less emphasis on the family-values issues that were given center stage during the Republican National Convention. At a rally in Findlay, Ohio, where Bush four years ago sounded a patriotic message at a local flag factory, the President stuck to an economic theme, describing a Clinton Administration as a “tax machine that spits out pink slips.”

As Bush turned his focus to trade, he also took Clinton to task for refusing to declare whether he favors the North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton has said he supports the spirit of the pact but has expressed reservations about its effect on jobs and the environment.

If Bush’s change of tack appeared to presage a more substantive debate, however, it also seemed to reaffirm that a battle now under Baker’s command would likely be fought in ever more personal terms.

Only last week it was Clinton who labeled Bush a “fear monger.” But as the President sought Thursday to paste that label on his rival, he also sought to affix a new series of unflattering descriptions.

At a rally in St. Louis, Bush dismissed Clinton’s less-than-emphatic statements on the free trade agreement and the Persian Gulf War as a sign of “double speak, double talk and double-time.”

In Cincinnati, he questioned Clinton’s character, saying, “Please elect me to keep the integrity and honor of the White House.”

And, as he appeared at the police siren factory to deliver what he insisted were non-political remarks, Bush spoke of Clinton’s “reputation for opportunism, as the kind of guy who will say anything, do anything for political gain.”

“I know politics,” he said. “I know as a candidate you can be on both sides of every question. But as a President, you cannot.”

Bush’s hardening tone may be related to polls taken since the GOP convention, which seem to indicate that his resurgence has stalled. A Washington Post poll released Thursday showed Clinton ahead, 51% to 41%--little changed since surveys taken before the convention ended.

Bush portrayed his own support for the free trade agreement and a wider free trade agenda as a recipe for creating jobs. But he followed a pattern in dwelling more on Clinton’s proposals than his own.

Bush’s sudden focus on Clinton’s plan to turn to foreign investors as a source of new federal revenue shone a spotlight on an issue that had received little attention from the presidential campaign.

Together with a tax increase on wealthy Americans--those who make more than $200,000 a year--the proposal stands as a centerpiece of Clinton’s economic plan.

The Arkansas governor contends that some foreign firms use accounting gimmicks to avoid paying their fair share of taxes on profits earned in the United States, and estimates that restoring equity could net the government $45 billion over four years.

Clinton and his lieutenants dispute the suggestion that the plan calls for a new tax. Citing congressional estimates, they say foreign firms avoid paying $30 billion a year in taxes they rightfully owe.

But Bush and his aides insisted Thursday that the plan was indeed a tax, and they contended that it would inevitably rebound against the United States.

Bush said American companies enjoy similar exemptions in some foreign nations, and contended that the plan would “not only destroy jobs and reduce investment here, it would do so throughout the global economy.”

Stephanopoulos, the Clinton aide, noted that more Americans had lost jobs under Bush than under any President since the Depression. “George Bush says you could do worse,” he said. “We say it could be better.”