Chepooka wrote yesterday about George Bush flip-flopping on the war. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” she said and suggested that fellow bloggers spread the word.

I wasn’t going to do it just yet for two reasons. One is that I was planning to work today on the second installment of “Marbury v. Madison,” dealing with the problem of activist judges. (That article is now slated to appear here Wednesday.) The second was that I didn’t want my blog to turn into a mirror blog of Chepooka. I like Chepooka’s site and I’ve taken to reading it almost daily, but I don’t want to end up duplicating it!

And then, I found this: “After Citing Doubt, Bush Declares ‘We Will Win’ Terror War” on the New York Times website. (You’ll need a subscription to read it, but I think they’re still free.)

President Bush said Tuesday “we will win” the war on terror, seeking to quell controversy and Democratic criticism over his earlier remark that victory may not be possible.

In a speech to the national convention of the American Legion, Bush said, “We meet today in a time of war for our country, a war we did not start yet one that we will win.”

Bush stepped in some poo-poo, but,

Bush’s war on terror remark was [just] the latest in a string of recent comments in which the president seemed to backpedal previous certainties.

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The campaign professed not to be worried that the president had gone off-message.

They never are. His entire presidency has been “off-message.” After all, it was Bush who said, “I am not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation,” and then went on to provide his services to less than “one party.” The sliver he decided on is the one others call “the elite,” but whom Bush, in a rare moment of honesty, called “my base.” And he supports them to the hilt, even when it means sending the sons and daughters of the people he does not call “my base” to other bases, in the middle east, to fight for the right of Halliburton to overcharge the United States for gasoline.

But why would Bush do such a stupid thing concerning his only campaign issue? I mean, after all, the Republicans, for the first time ever, are holding their convention in a city they always hated before 9/11, and they moved from their traditional date range to hold the convention closer 9/11 — all this, by their own admission, just to capitalize on Bush’s War. So there can’t be a more obvious flip-flop, nu? (Not that it’s his first flip-flop. The press generally doesn’t report what Bush says as a “flip-flop,” because it would detract from the label folks want to pin on Kerry if everyone knew that Bush had made as many changes as Kerry &#8212 or any other politician, for that matter.) So, again, I ask, why would Bush do such a stupid thing?

Bush’s comment — and the ensuing criticism — took attention away from the carefully crafted image of Bush being broadcast from the Republican National Convention in New York, as a decisive wartime commander in chief who is securing America’s safety and sure of the course on which he has set the nation.

Oh . . . now I understand.