Gov. George W. Bush today criticized Vice President Al Gore's call to tap the nation's petroleum reserves as "bad policy" that sought "short-term political gain at the cost of long-term national security." On a day when high gasoline prices moved to the center of the presidential race, Mr. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, turned to the issue repeatedly in response to Mr. Gore's proposal that oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - a government a government stockpile of nearly 600 million barrels of crude oil - be made available to the market.