I'm Confused.

"They are not political speeches," Bush said outside a Little Rock restaurant where he made a campaign stop with Asa Hutchinson, a former congressman who is running for governor against Democrat Mike Beebe.

"They're speeches about the future of this country and they're speeches to make it clear that if we retreat before the job is done, this nation will become even more in jeopardy.

President Bush's appearance at the American legion comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's fiery speech before the same group.

On Tuesday, Rumsfeld enraged congressional Democrats when he alluded to critics of the Bush administration's war policies in terms associated with the failure to stop Nazism in the 1930s.

The president said Wednesday, "These are important times and I would seriously hope people wouldn't politicize these issues that I'm going to talk about."

Perhaps Mr. Bush could work out a signal for us about which are the political speeches and which aren't. Maybe he could wear a hat, or a particular jacket?

Because some of us get confused when he's in Little Rock campaigning for a Republican candidate, and he talks about it, and then goes to Nashville to a GOP fundraiser and talks about it some more, while his people are making speeches attacking members of the other party, and he'll be speaking at the very same venue where one of those speeches just happened. But he says he "would seriously hope people wouldn't politicize these issues," and that they aren't political speeches.

How does that work, exactly?