Vice President George Bush suggested yesterday that Gov. Michael S. Dukakis apologize to a couple that was brutally attacked by an escapee from a Massachusetts prison furlough program, while Democrats tried to squeeze every last ounce of political gain from Wednesday night's vice president debate.

But Dukakis stumbled himself even as he vowed to "hit hard" at Bush's running mate Dan Quayle.

Campaigning in Missouri, he unwittingly used a foreign-owned factory as the setting for a speech criticizing rising foreign ownership of domestic manufacturing plants.

"You are one of the few survivors" of the trend to foreign ownership in the auto-parts industry, he said to workers at the Moog Automotive Co.--which has been owned since 1977 by a New York-based holding company controlled by an Italian family. Aides said Dukakis was unaware of the ownership of the company.

Bush campaigned in the swing states of Ohio and Missouri, where he referred to the attack that furlough escapee Willie Horton committed on a Maryland couple last year. He criticized Dukakis for having "an astounding lack of sensitivity for crime victims."

Bush said the Massachusetts governor had presided over a criminal justice system "completely out of whack: a 'Twilight Zone' world where prisoners' right to privacy had more weight than the citizens' right to safety."

With one month to go to the election, the polls continued to show Bush a step ahead in the race for the White House. Democrats were hoping that other polls rating Sen. Lloyd M. Bentsen (D-Tex.) as the winner of the vice presidential debate would serve as prelude to a shift in the presidential race itself.

GOP vice presidential candidate Quayle laughed at that, as he shrugged off Democratic campaign commercials aimed at raising doubts about his fitness for high office.

"We can stand the heat. We're going to stay in the kitchen. George Bush is going to be the next president of the United States. The voters will vote for him," the Indiana senator said as he campaigned in Tennessee.

Bentsen chipped in on the Democratic anti-Quayle barrage, saying it was an "incredible misfit" for his vice presidential rival to compare his own experience in Congress with John F. Kennedy's before the 1960 election. Quayle's self-comparison produced the most riveting moment of the debate, when Bentsen turned to him and said, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

Campaigning in Texas, Bentsen said, "I was reading the paper this morning where George Bush said he thought Dan Quayle had won that [debate] and they...I'm very sorry," he said as his own laughter interrupted his sentence. "And yet every poll showed we won, and I'd say 'George, as President Reagan would say, facts are very troubling things.'"

Dukakis said he had personally reviewed the anti-Quayle commercials before they were shipped to television stations.

The Democratic candidate for the White House campaigned in Missouri, trying to make up some of the ground between himself and Bush.

He accused the Indiana senator of saying he was "happy that foreign owners are buying up America."

"Maybe the Republican ticket wants our children to work for foreign owners, pay rent to foreign owners and owe their future to foreign owners--but that's not the kind of future Lloyd Bentsen and I want," he said.

As he spoke, one company executive asked another if Dukakis was aware of the plant's foreign ownership. Aides rushed to tell reporters that Dukakis was not criticizing Moog or its owners but was opposed to a growing trend of foreign investment in the United States.

For his part, the vice president used great detail to describe the story of Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who went on a crime spree in Maryland last year several months after being released from a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough.

He called Horton a "coldblooded killer" and said he had broken into the home of a Maryland couple, Cliff and Angie Barnes, torturing her and threatening to kill them both.

Bush said that when people tried to look into the furlough program, "the governor's administration stonewalled, citing--and this is no joke--the prisoner's right to privacy."

He said Dukakis should have apologized to the Barnes, but has not.

Leslie Dach, a spokesman for Dukakis, had this reponse:

"Michael Dukakis is not going to play politics with the victims of crime. He's said it was a tragedy and the law has been changed."