Ron, I think the point you make is an important one. President Bush has been all too eager to define himself as a "war president" since 9/11, because that supposedly justifies any excess, and absolves him of blame for any failure. But it really depends on how one defines a "war". In one sense or another, the US has been "at war" for decades: the Cold War lasted from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, and there have been numerous US military efforts in countries all around the globe during and since that time.

If you say that we are "at war" whenever we put the military into a situation where people are fighting and dying, then we are in a more or less constant state of war, and whatever license that status extends to the President is also perpetual. On the other hand, if you define "war" as a declared war, we haven't been at war since 1945. Obviously, though, the President has siezed the rhetorical advantages that the "war on terror" provides, and is happy to promote the idea that this means he should be judged by a different standard.