Gore Fights Back, Says Bush ‘Dishonors’ Environmentalists : Politics: The Democrat attacks Administration policies in major speech on protecting resources. He says the President has stooped to name-calling in desperate attempt to save his job.

MANCHESTER, N.H. —  Lashing back at President Bush’s characterization of him as “Mr. Ozone”--shorthand for criticism that he is an environmental extremist who would hurt American workers as he scurries about saving trees and owls--Democratic vice presidential nominee Al Gore sought to turn the tables Friday by saying Bush has been reduced to mean-spirited sloganeering in a desperate attempt to retain his job.

“The fact is he dishonors the American people who care deeply about our environment and recognize the urgent need for action,” Gore said in his first campaign speech totally devoted to his most favored subject--environmental protection. “If I was forced to run on George Bush’s environmental record, I might be tempted to stoop to name-calling, too.”

Delivering what he called “a serious and major speech on the environment” at St. Anselm’s College here, Gore sharply attacked Administration policies for failing to adequately protect the air, water and land while allowing corporations to circumvent environmental protection regulations.

By contrast, he promised that Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton and he would provide leadership that sought to protect the environment while still creating jobs.

“The real truth is that George Bush and (Vice President) Dan Quayle are undermining our children’s future in order to protect their big polluting buddies and their own jobs,” Gore said.

“They are falling back on the same tired old formula for the environment that they’ve already applied unsuccessfully to the economy: Ignore the problems, obstruct change and, in the end, let the damage accumulate for future generations to confront.”

Attempting to hammer home the message that Bush has not been the “environmental President” he pledged to be during the 1988 campaign, Gore said, “We have, of course, heard many professions of concern and commitment to the environment from George Bush.” But, Gore said, the Administration instead “has been a one-man wrecking crew, the source of setback after setback for the U.S. and the world community” on environmental issues.

The Tennessee senator’s speech--read for the most part in a stilted and robotic monotone--marked a dramatic departure from Gore’s more animated stump speeches, which he has been delivering in a succession of stops as the campaign nears an end.

While Gore has mentioned the environment in virtually every campaign speech, he has not pressed the issue as forcefully. Even in this speech, his warnings about the environment were not as gloomy or fearsome as expressed in his best-selling book “Earth in the Balance.”

In the days leading up to Friday’s speech, Gore’s aides said privately that he had pressed the Clinton campaign staff for an opportunity to expound at length on the subject. “This is something that (Gore) really cares about and really wanted to make a statement about” before the campaign ended, said Mark Gearan, the one-time Clinton aide who now manages Gore’s campaign.

Gore picked this recession-battered state as the setting for the speech in an effort to stress his contention that promoting the environment and producing jobs do not need to be mutually exclusive.

“Here in New Hampshire,” Gore said, “better than in most places, you understand what I’m saying. The failed economic policies of George Bush and Dan Quayle long ago kicked New Hampshire in the stomach and took the wind out of your economy.”

Gore pledged that a Clinton Administration would form a partnership with private industry to “provide the right incentives to help the private sector profit from solving environmental problems.”

He added: “What George Bush and Dan Quayle can’t seem to remember is something that the rest of us can’t forget. Our environment is literally the common ground of generations past and generations to come.”

In an apparent reference to Bush’s contention in Michigan on Thursday that Gore was “crazy” and has “way out, far out” views on the environment, the Democrat said: “This is the mainstream, not the extreme. This is the voice of Americans everywhere, a voice that George Bush, in his divisive and deceptive political campaign, refuses to hear.”

After mentioning the “Ozone” moniker Bush has pinned on him, Gore told his audience: “You know the old saying about sticks and stones. The problem with George Bush is that he’s got the name-calling theory of campaigning and the sticks-and-stones theory of governing--with policies that hurt our environment and hold back our economy.”