Gov. George W. Bush tried to paint Vice President Al Gore tonight as a traditional big-spending Democrat whose proposals would lead to a bigger, more intrusive federal government.

But the White House, which believes that Mr. Clinton has never received sufficient attention for his deficit-reduction efforts, has also taken pains to make sure that the President is not perceived as a big-spending Democrat.

The President never mentioned Gov. Mario M. Cuomo by name, but he referred repeatedly to liberal big-spending Democrats in New York and Washington.

He decided to push his overhaul of health care above all, found himself derided as a big-spending old Democrat and wound up being unable to get either proposal passed, even in a Democratic Congress.

Republicans blame an economic slowdown that started when Bill Clinton was still in the White House, and big-spending Democrats in the Senate.

And Mr. Clinton won last year by proclaiming himself a different sort of Democrat - different from the old, big-spending Democrat, the Ted Kennedy Democrat.

Conservatives viewed Mr. Rendell as a big-city, big-spending Democrat.

"The day of the big-spending Democrat is back."

Blame all of America's ills on the big-spending Democrats, the lazy poor and the troublemaking minority rabble-rousers.

From there, it was back to the subject of trust, onward to his personal life story (the "grandson of Italian immigrants") and, finally, back on the attack, as he belittled Mrs. Clinton as a big-spending Democrat.