Clinton Works Over Bush’s Record on Jobs During Midwestern Swing : Politics: Democratic nominee uses new unemployment figures to attack the President. He complains that GOP’s new TV ad is ‘blatantly false.’

Carving a path across the recession-scarred industrial Midwest on Friday, Bill Clinton talked jobs. Jobs that now pay less than before, jobs that have gone overseas, jobs that have just dried up.

In Toledo, Ohio, the Democratic presidential nominee had morning coffee with six people in various stages of economic distress, several of them unemployed. Later, an unemployed woman introduced him downstate in Dayton. And here in Flint, the Arkansas governor took up his cudgel against President Bush before a hulking former Chevrolet plant in the city General Motors made famous.

“You do not deserve what has happened to the United States of America in the last four years, and we can do better,” Clinton told several thousand people gathered at dusk on a knoll above the plant, which closed about four years ago and now houses an auto parts facility.

For Clinton, the day was framed around the anticipation of an increase in the nation’s jobless rate in the final report on that economic barometer before the Nov. 3 election.

As it turned out, the unemployment rate actually declined from 7.6% in August to 7.5% in September. But that did not stop a full-throated attempt by Clinton to narrow the presidential debate to one central issue: the state of the economy under Bush.

“Today we got the final report card before the election on the Bush Administration’s economic policies,” Clinton told a crowd outside Democratic headquarters in Toledo early Friday. “We learned that unemployment remained high with no end in sight. Trickle-down economics has brought a tidal wave of unemployment and declining incomes, and every month it lays waste to the dreams of more Americans. This recession has now lasted 26 months, one year longer than any since the Depression.”

Clinton belittled Bush’s reaction to the unemployment figures. The President, casting the unemployment figures in the best light, said they proved that things are moving in the right direction.

“Well, in a way we are,” Clinton said in Toledo. “We’re going to move him out of the White House.”

Although the jobs issue dominated Clinton’s day, the candidate continued to bridle at a new Bush TV commercial that alleges the Democrat plans to raise taxes on the middle class.

Clinton called the commercial “blatantly false,” “a load of bull” and “a total fairy tale.” His campaign also rushed a countering commercial onto the air.

“It’s outrageous,” said Clinton, who told reporters in Dayton that he had specifically ordered his campaign to respond to the Bush spot. He added: “If the average person thought (the ad) was true, they’d probably be inclined to vote against me.”

Clinton also said the ad indicated that the President’s campaign has “given up on winning on their record.”

“These people don’t understand--they don’t care what’s true. They have no allegiance to the truth, they have no convictions about anything. . . . They just made it up. They pulled it out of thin air.”

The Bush commercial features pictures of various workers and the amounts of money they allegedly would have to pay in increased taxes under a Clinton Administration.

Contrary to the ad, however, Clinton’s economic blueprint calls for a moderate middle-class tax cut; the plan’s tax hike would be directed only at the wealthy.

Judging by the response of the candidate and his advisers, the ad hit a nerve.

“We’re going to fight back,” said one aide. “This could screw things up. This could really hurt us.”

The fact that the unemployment rate actually dropped caused little more than a flash of disappointment in the Clinton camp. Campaign director Bruce Lindsey said pointedly: “7.5% isn’t anything to write home about. Clearly, the overall indication is that the economy is going in the wrong direction.”

Clinton armed himself with a ready supply of other dour economic statistics to press his case against the incumbent.

“How much evidence do we need? Personal income, leading indicators, housing starts, retail sales industrial production, all down,” Clinton said. “Tuesday, the consumer confidence report came out--consumer confidence takes another big dive. How can consumers be confident when they don’t have any money to pay for consumption? We need a change. This President was in office 1,327 days before he came up with an economic plan. And when he did, it was just the same old thing.”

Clinton also went out of his way to undercut the Bush effort--epitomized in the President’s new ad--to depict him as just another in a line of “tax-and-spend” Democrats.

“We don’t need tax-and-spend and we don’t need trickle-down,” he told an audience of students at Wright State University in Dayton. After he ticked off some of his proposals, including job training for high school graduates and a college loan fund for all students, Clinton said: “All these things require a lot of effort, and they don’t sound like trickle-down, they don’t sound like tax-and-spend. And they require a government that is more entrepreneurial, more active and less bureaucratic.”

But much as he sought to reinforce a “new Democrat” image, Clinton trod on the turf of the old Democrats in car-manufacturing country, where Teamsters and other labor groups were generously salted through his audiences.

In keeping with the theme of the day, supporters at each campaign rally held up blue-and-white signs reading “Jobs Now.”

Clinton’s focus on the economic issue also included a more human touch than it usually does. At Bud and Luke’s restaurant in Toledo, Clinton chatted with working-class Ohio residents about the economic pressures faced by their families.

To each, Clinton repeated details of his economic programs and promised that jobs would be more plentiful and health care would be affordable under his Administration.

“People like you make me so upset with this country,” Clinton told Paula Williams, a 31-year-old single mother of two children who is working part time as a bartender while she tries to put herself through college.

“Government should be rewarding people who work hard and play by the rules.”

Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, also scored Bush on the economy as he campaigned in Colorado, one of a handful of Western states the Democratic ticket is hoping to pry away from its usual place in the GOP column.

Commenting on the day’s economic news to reporters in Denver, Gore said: “We are at a severe risk of the nation going into a triple-dip recession.”

Times staff writer James Bornemeier contributed to this story.