ERIE -- President Bush touted his economic record in northwestern Pennsylvania yesterday as he reprised his nomination acceptance speech for thousands of sun-roasted but enthusiastic supporters jammed into a high school football stadium.

His address came as he and Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, engaged in a long distance debate highlighting the economy and Medicare in a frenetic weekend of appearances in electoral battlegrounds.

This region has been battered by manufacturing job losses in recent years, but Bush, citing fresh job statistics, maintained that his policies offered a path to prosperity.

"Because we acted our economy is growing," Bush said, pointing to Friday's report of an additional 144,000 jobs added to the nation's payrolls in August.

"We added 200,000 new jobs, a million-seven since August '03," Bush said. "The national unemployment rate is lower than the average for the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s ... our economic plan is working."

The Kerry campaign has used those same numbers to criticize the administration, maintaining that the pace of job growth in August, while positive, was barely adequate to keep up with the increase in the labor force, while saying that even after the job increases of the last year, the nation had still experienced a net loss of jobs under Bush's administration.

"They promised to create 7 million jobs," Kerry said yesterday in Akron. "Guess what, they're about 6 million short."

In his appearances, in Akron and later in Steubenville, Ohio, Kerry also criticized Bush over the Friday announcement of a 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums, an $11.60 monthly increase next year that will be the largest in the history of the program.

Bush made no reference to the premium hike yesterday, but boasted of the expansion in Medicare drug benefits that he signed earlier this year. Kerry has also criticized that legislation, contending that it doesn't provide a real answer to soaring drug costs.

At a soggy Kerry rally in Steubenville last evening, in which Kerry focused on the loss of jobs during the Bush administration, two of Kerry's defenders, former Ohio Sen. John Glenn and Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also criticized the Republicans for a convention they described as being focused on negative attacks on Kerry.

"Who are they to go question the patriotism of our candidate, particularly John Kerry? That's why I'm angry," said McEntee in challenging the military records of Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush. "John Kerry went to Vietnam. He went there not once but twice. Who are they to question an individual who wins three purple hearts, a silver star and a bronze star?"

Of Bush's National Guard service, McEntee said: "All he had in Alabama was one tooth filled, and they never found him again.

"Who are they to question us? Dick Cheney -- five deferments, five deferments -- so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. Sisters and brothers, there are heros, there are patriots and there are wannabes; they have the wannabes, we have the real deal."

Glenn said the Republicans had used the politics of distraction at their convention to avoid talking about issues like jobs, and Kerry repeatedly touched on the net loss of roughly 1 million jobs during Bush's presidency in Steubenville, a working class steel town on the banks of the Ohio River.

"If you believe America's moving in the right direction, if you believe that you're doing better than you were four years ago, that you're safer, that you're job is better ... then you should go out and you should vote for George Bush," Kerry said, as the Steubenville crowd repeatedly shouted "No!"

"But if you believe we can do better in America ... if you believe we can make ourselves safer by working with other countries and getting our respect back, then we ask you to join John Edwards and John Kerry to change the direction of this country."

Kerry also accused Bush of failing to follow through on his promise to protect American seniors by pointing to the Medicare premium increase.

Yesterday, the Kerry campaign began running an ad focusing on the increase. The ad shows Bush on Thursday night stating that "we have a moral responsibility to honor America's seniors," noting that the "very next day George Bush imposes the biggest Medicare premium increase in history while prescription drug costs still skyrocket."

The ad marks a new and aggressive strategy by the campaign to turn the Bush campaign's criticism of Kerry -- that he is indecisive and unpredictable -- back onto Bush, by arguing that the president says one thing but does another.

In his appearance in Steubenville yesterday, Kerry accused Bush of flip-flopping on taking care of health care for seniors and on steel tariffs.

"He broke his promise to the people of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania," Kerry said, referring to the steel tariffs.

Bush cited local economic conditions as he reminded the Erie crowd of a proposal from his acceptance speech as he called for the creation of opportunity zones to increase employment in targeted areas, one of several broad domestic goals with few policy specifics that he outlined Thursday in his Madison Square Garden address.

Bush said he would grow the American economy by expanding fair trade and pressing foreign governments not to discriminate against U.S. exports.

"To keep jobs here in American we must open up markets across the world," Bush said, pleading that he would tell leaders abroad, "You treat us like we treat you; American workers can compete with anyone anytime, anywhere, so long as the rules are fair."

Bush also derided Kerry's call for a reversal of recent tax cuts for those earning more than $200,000 a year.

"I'm running against a fella that's proposed $2 trillion in new programs," he said, using a projection for the cost of Kerry's proposals made by the GOP campaign, one that is disputed by Kerry's aides.

He argued that Kerry's plan to "tax the rich" is illusory.

"You know what would happen," he said. "They hire accountants and lawyers and you get stuck with the bill."

This was Bush's 35th trip to Pennsylvania since becoming president, coming in the middle of a battleground flyaround that took off from Scranton just after the GOP convention in New York. So ardently has Bush courted the state that his schedule has become the fodder for late night satire. On Friday night, Conan O'Brien joked that his visits have become so frequent that instead of chanting "Four More Years," Pennsylvania crowds were shouting "Just go away."

That was hardly the case with this crowd between 15,000 and 20,000 sitting on concrete bleachers or standing on the baked artificial turf of the Erie Veterans Memorial Stadium.

"I appreciated his candor and the policies he is taking on most of the issues," said Rob Detwiler, of Erie, who described the opportunity to see a president as "the chance of a lifetime."

In his visits to Pennsylvania, Bush is seeking the electoral votes of a state that eluded him in 2000, when former Vice President Al Gore won the state by more than 200,000 votes. Following his post-convention visits to Scranton and to this Great Lakes port, Bush will be back in the state Thursday, flying to events in suburban Philadelphia and Westmoreland County.

Bush's Thursday events in the state are in pivotal areas which are, politically, mirror images of one another. Suburban Philadelphia is traditionally Republican, but has become increasingly hospitable to Democratic candidates, including Gore, former President Bill Clinton and Gov. Ed Rendell, in part because many of its GOP voters are less conservative on social issues. Westmoreland County, by registration, has a Democratic majority, but it has become increasingly Republican in voting performance, reflecting many voters' conservative views on issues such as abortion and gun control.

Bush charged through his Labor Day weekend campaigning with the tailwind of positive post-convention poll results. One nationwide survey, to be published by Time Magazine, assessed Bush's lead at 11 points. Newsweek said Bush led 52-41 over Kerry at the close of the week, a significant post-convention jump for the president in a contest that had appeared nearly deadlocked through the summer. Zogby International depicted a closer race, however, putting Bush's lead at just 2 percentage points in a poll that coincided with those of the two magazines.

"If he wins Northwest Pennsylvania and Erie County, he will win the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," said Sen. Rick Santorum. "If he wins the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he will win the presidency."