"You Wanna Peace of Me?"

This particular story came out a full week ago, on July 21st at a Bush campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and it naturally went by the American press corps without much of a hiccup. "The enemy declared war on us," Bush told a re-election rally in Cedar Rapids. "Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president .... The next four years will be peaceful years." Bush used the words "peace" or "peaceful" a total of 20 times, according to Reuters.

Now, get in my WayBackMachine and hold on tight. February 2004, on "Meet the Press": "I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind." (Transcript of the Russert show here.)

So ... looks like the February strut is now inoperable? Poll reality setting in?

Back to Grand Rapids, last week: "For a while we were marching to war. Now we're marching to peace .... America is a safer place. Four more years and America will be safer and the world will be more peaceful," Bush said.

"Four more years and America will be safer"! 'Cause we're marching toward peace now, whereas we used to be marching to war for a while, and in four more years maybe we won't be marching at all but just standing in a stupor in the middle of a debris-strewn field of former dreams, if there are four more years.

Have you got that? Is that all perfectly clear now?