RLANDO, Fla. - George W. Bush yesterday ended a week focused mainly on public policy with a rebuke of Vice President Al Gore, saying, ''My opponent has unfortunately spent the week misleading Americans.''
Speaking via satellite to Republicans in Pennsylvania, Bush said: ''His misrepresentations are serious business, not the legitimate debate of political disagreements. They are a disturbing pattern of embellishments and sudden reversals.''
The latest example, Bush said, was from Friday, when Gore said, ''I've been part of the discussions on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve since the days when it was first established.''
The Democrat made the comment as he answered questions about his call to release oil from the stockpile to reduce fuel prices.
Bush noted that the reserve was created in 1975, two years before Gore entered Congress. Last winter, the vice president said that tapping the reserve would be bad policy, since oil producers could counteract any release by reducing production.
''It was created for cases of war or a sudden disruption of America's energy supply,'' Bush said. ''That's why it's called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, not the Strategic Political Reserve.''
Moments earlier, he told a crowd gathered in a sweltering Orlando airplane hangar that Gore had made the shift ''to bail him out 45 days before the election.''
Bush also said Gore had changed explanations after saying his mother-in-law's prescription arthritis medication costs nearly three times as much as his dog's. That assertion was challenged in a Globe story last week.
During the week, Gore also hummed a union jingle, saying he recalled it from his childhood. But the tune was not written until he was 27. In addition, he raised $4.5 million at a Hollywood fund-raiser days after criticizing the industry for violent movies and games aimed at teenagers.
When Bush brought up the oil-reserve issue, he adapted Ronald Reagan's line: ''Just yesterday, there he went again.''
A Gore spokeswoman, Kym Spell, accused Bush of going back on his own words.
''You simply can't take George Bush's word for it,'' Spell said. ''When he promises to talk about the real issues, Mr. Bush just can't help himself. He makes personal attacks and misleading statements to distort the real differences on the issues,'' Spell said.
The spokeswoman said Bush had been mistaken in his criticism. While Congress authorized the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975, she said, its functional details were not settled until after 1977, when Gore served on the House Commerce Committee's Energy and Power Subcommittee.
''They had to solidify the location. They had to get the sources for it,'' Spell said. ''The only thing that happened in '75 was Congress said, `Yeah, this is a good idea.' Perhaps Mr. Bush needs a lesson the legislative process.''
Bush's spokeswoman, Karen Hughes, said the shift from policy to personality was justified given Gore's statements.
''After the last eight years, the American people want to be able to look to the White House and trust their president to tell them the truth, and I think the events of this week have seriously cast doubt on the vice president's statements, the things he is willing to say in public while he is running for president,'' she said.
Bush's criticism of Gore threatened to overshadow a weeklong focus by the Republican's ''Real Plans for Real People,'' as well as the burgeoning policy debate about how to deal with high gasoline and home heating-oil prices.
He made his comments amid an aggressive campaign swing through Florida, which his camp sees as a must-win state.
The governor held an airport rally in Sarasota on Friday morning, made a speech at a seniors' center in Tampa, and finished with rallies at the Tampa airport and Coconut Grove Convention Center outside Miami.
The Coconut Grove rally was one of Bush's most boisterous events all year. Thousands of cheering people were pumped up by the music of Ricky Martin and a array of lights and confetti.
''Vamos a ganar,'' the Texas governor said repeatedly: ''We are going to win.''
Bush had been expected to win the state and its 25 electoral votes, partly because his brother Jeb is governor. However, three recent polls have found the race to be a tie, with Gore pulling a slightly higher percentage in two of them.
In an interview yesterday, Jeb Bush attributed the closeness to ''swing voters'' who were bouncing between the campaigns.
But the state GOP chairman, Al Cardenas, said Friday that the campaign had suffered because it was lackadaisical. He said Bush's support had ''gone south'' for three weeks, but was rebounding.
Dario Moreno, a political science professor at Florida International University, said Gore's choice of Joseph I. Lieberman as his running mate helped him among the Jewish population.
He said the vice president also ''drew first blood'' by proposing a plan to provide prescription drugs to senior citizens before Bush, and benefited from anger in the black commununity over Jeb Bush's efforts to end affirmative action in Florida.
''I think that at the end of the day, Bush will win Florida,'' Moreno said. ''But every hour he spends in Florida and every dime he spends in Florida is less of each he has to spend where this election will be decided - the industrial Midwest.''
