Via Atrios and The Liquid List, we learn that Bush's bus tour of Ohio is actually a plane tour.

But Bush has a hard sell in Ohio as he tries to convince voters, especially blue-collar ones facing a bleak job market, that he's the man to guide the U.S. economy for another four years.

As he did in Michigan on Monday, the first leg of a two-day, nearly 300-mile campaign bus tour, Bush acknowledged the despair faced by unemployed workers in Ohio and assured them that the U.S. economy is on an upswing.

(...)

Tuesday's bus tour, about 60 miles through western Ohio, actually includes two airplane flights — one from Detroit to Toledo and another from Toledo to Dayton. His first two stops — Maumee and Dayton — are in counties Al Gore won in 2000. The last two stops — Lebanon and Cincinnati — are in counties that Bush won easily.

The idea of calling it a bus tour is, of course, that travelling around in a bus is a lot more folksy and common man-ish that using Air Force One to go short distances.

But the man flew from Detroit to Toledo. I'd be a lot more forgiving about this if those two cities weren't right around the corner from each other. Really, look at a map. It's like flying from SFO to Mineta International. Some "bus tour".

A big deal? Not really, but if John Kerry did this...

UPDATE: the Reuters recap of the tour linked on Drudge makes no mention of the plane flights. Score it: AP 1, Reuters 0!