Speaking to a crowd of about 10,000 people, President Bush emphasized that the United States would win the war on terror at the Farm Progress Show in Alleman on Tuesday.

He emphasized it with all the vim and vigor he always does, fists clenched and brow furrowed, “We will win the war on terror.”

It wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary, except that it comes just days after his interview with the NBC’s Matt Lauer of the Today Show. When asked about the war on terror Bush replied, “I don’t think you can win it.”

Perhaps he was caught in a weak moment. Then again, perhaps we have another flip-flopper on our hands.

After a slew of attacks from Democrats, Laura Bush and John McCain said that the President was just misunderstood and needed to clarify his statements.

All this time, the Bush campaign has been skewering John Kerry for contradictory statements, calling him a flip-flopper. Yet when Bush contradicts himself publicly, he is just misunderstood?

For a president who has had entire books made on some of his bizarre comments, it seems he should have had someone to clarify for him all along. Perhaps then we would know why there weren’t WMDs in Iraq, or how we are going to bring the troops home, or why he referred to Iowa as the “hinterlands” in a Tuesday interview with Rush Limbaugh.

Everyone makes mistakes and slips up sometimes. But for a president who is known for his unwavering resolve and his plain hard-headed stubbornness to slip up on one of the main things on which he has built his presidency seems amateur.

It’s not so much that he contradicted himself. It’s bound to happen.

It’s more about the fact that he has been calling someone else out onto the floor for flip-flopping on issues when he is just as guilty of doing it.

Bush has been changing his tune since the beginning. When he ran for election, his theme was compassionate conservatism, and since then it seems the story has been anything but. His black-or-white method of decision making discredits those who look at it in shades of grey. Nothing is black-and-white anymore.

Maybe we should all just forget about this flip-flopping issue. People change their minds, and that isn’t a bad thing. Evolving issues require evolving decisions.

Bush’s change in direction proved we all do it — whether it’s contradicting ourselves, amending our decisions or, heaven forbid, flip-flopping.

The Bush campaign needs to stop using the flip-flop accusations because they don’t hold water when its own candidate does the same.