"The best way to avoid the draft is to vote for me."

Those were George W. Bush's words yesterday on the campaign trail.

There's no better example of the tactical flexibility achieved when you completely cut campaign rhetoric off from reality.

As we've noted earlier, President Bush's policies don't necessitate a draft. But to claim that his policies make a draft less likely than John Kerry's policies is simply irrational.

If nothing else, consider the president's own rhetoric. Bush claims that Kerry will precipitously withdraw troops from Iraq. He also says that he, unlike Kerry, will pursue a more forward-leaning military-based war on terror. Those two claims simply aren't consistent with Kerry being more likely to bring back a draft.

In addition to being palpably false, what the president is saying doesn't even make sense -- at least to those of us in the 'reality-based community'. At least from the AP story linked above, the president's rationale seems to be that "The person talking about a draft is my opponent." I doubt very much that the president's folks even have a rationale for what he's saying. Words divorced from reality.