NATIONAL GUARD UDPATE....There have been a couple of interesting new items about George Bush's National Guard record today.

First, Salon reports that George Bush didn't move to Alabama (and quit going to Guard drills) in 1972 because he was offered a job on Winton "Red" Blount's Senate campaign. Rather, Bush's father called an old family friend, Jimmy Allison, who was managing Blount's campaign, and pulled some strings:

In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?

"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."

This is both interesting and plausible, but probably pretty meaningless. I doubt that this story is going to draw much blood.

However, that's decidedly not true for today's second story: Ben Barnes, former Speaker of the House in Texas, has finally decided to go very public with the news that he was the one who called in some favors and got Bush into the "Champagne Unit" of the Texas Air National Guard in 1968.

Now, this is not actually fresh news: as I've mentioned before, Barnes testified under oath about this in 1999. Overall, though, Barnes has kept a very low profile about this and has studiously avoided bringing it up in public.

But apparently the Swift Vets have gotten him very, very mad, and on Wednesday he'll be on 60 Minutes II with Dan Rather to tell the whole story. The difference between a newspaper article and a 60 Minutes segment is huge, and this is going to bring the whole National Guard story back into circulation for another go around.

Is it good for America to choose our president based on what John Kerry did in 1968 vs. what George Bush did in 1968? Nope. But between the Swift Boat smear artists and tonight's convention speeches, the Republicans have made it very clear that they think this election is going to be won in the gutter. I suspect that by the time it's all over, they're going to rue that decision.

CHRIS vs. ZELL....So my wife tells me that Chris Matthews just laid some serious smack on Zell Miller. Did anyone see it? Tell us all about it in comments....

DECONSTRUCTING DICK....Amy emailed me to say that her internet connection was dicey tonight and could I please liveblog the convention in her place? So here goes.

Listening to Cheney's speech, the thought that kept running through my mind was that I'm sure glad I'm not a campaign reporter. I mean, if I were, then I'd have to figure out a thousand words of coherent prose to file sometime in the next hour or so, and I'm just not sure I could. After all, it was just Cheney's usual flat, boring, rabidly warmongering and intermittently dishonest stump speech. What is there to say?

But I'll try. For starters, I note that he just couldn't resist using the "sensitive war" nonsense yet again. Classy guy.

I note also that Zell Miller got way louder applause than Cheney. Maybe they should have put him on the ticket instead?

And I was pleased that halfway through the speech the crowd started yelling "Inkblot, Inkblot!" That seemed like a gracious gesture to a famous Democratic cat. That was what they were yelling, wasn't it?

What else? Well, between Zell and Dick, there were so many mentions of FDR that you'd almost think the guy had been a Republican. Who'd have thought Roosevelt was such a GOP hero?

And finally, I note that Cheney ended his speech with a simple "Thank you all," which seems like a breach of etiquette. Isn't the required finale for all convention speeches "God bless you, and God bless America"?

I'd write more, but I think the cat box needs cleaning again. Besides, after hearing Zell and Dick I'll bet Michael Bérubé thought he'd died and gone to heaven. I imagine his commentary should be up soon.

A BRIEF MESSAGE....We're all about civil discourse here at Political Animal, but what else can you say to Zell Miller except....

Fuck you, Zell.

WAR WEARINESS....Ryan Lizza:

Last night, I was at the New York Yacht Club sipping mojitos and nibbling seared tuna at a party thrown by liberal bogeyman Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. In the heart of the right-wing conspiracy, I couldn't find a defender of the war. Granted, Norquist's instincts since the end of the Cold War are fairly isolationist, so his gathering attracted many similarly minded Republicans. But it's still surprising to hear how unpopular the war has become among some on the right. One guest assured me that anti-war sentiment among conservatives is "like a virus that is rapidly spreading."

There's a lot of that going around. I wonder how much more of this we'd be hearing from conservatives if we weren't eight weeks away from an election?

"NO CONCEPTUAL GRASP"....Andrew Sullivan looked at the transcript of George Bush's comment about not being able to win the war on terror, and instead of making the standard "Bushism" kind of cheap shot about it, he gets to the real reason that this matters:

....every time I hear the president talk extemporaneously about the war — his interview with Tim Russert last February was a classic — he does seem to have almost no conceptual grasp of what he's talking about. Back then, he seemed flummoxed by the very concept of a distinction between a war of choice and a war of necessity. Now he seems to be parroting a Council on Foreign Relations confab on the permanence of terrorism.

Andrew is half right: the real problem with Bush is that he sounds this way on every subject when he's talking without a script. Unless he's been thoroughly coached, it's plainly obvious that he just doesn't understand what he's talking about.

Now, as it happens, I don't think that intelligence per se is that big a deal in a president. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said (or perhaps didn't) about FDR, he had "a second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament," and he did just fine anyway, didn't he?

Still, even though FDR might not have been a policy wonk, he could hold a press conference and make it clear that he understood what he was doing. But with Bush, every time you get past the high school version of his policies, he's just adrift. He's generally shrewd enough to change the subject when he realizes he's at sea, but when he does answer it's scary.

Like I said, I don't think we need Albert Einstein in the Oval Office. But do Republicans really feel comfortable with a guy who so plainly doesn't understand his own policies? Don't they think this might have something to do with the fact that so much of what he's done has turned out badly even from a conservative perspective? When is enough enough?

RICHARD NIXON SPEAKS....Arnold: "Listening to Nixon speak was like a breath of fresh air."

Wow. That's not something you're likely to hear again anytime soon.

MY VERSION OF CONVENTION COVERAGE....Overwhelmingly, liberal bloggers seem to feel that if they watch the Republican convention speakers any longer they will explode. So they aren't. Even the ones who are specifically in New York to cover the convention can't stand it and are mostly hanging out and just chatting with each other.

Pussies. I just watched Bill Frist for, um, must have been ten minutes at least. He uses his hands a lot when he talks, doesn't he? Must be that surgical training. I don't quite remember what he said, though, aside from him being a doctor and all. My wife, whose instincts are a bit more sympathetic to conservatives than mine, mumbled something about "snake oil salesman," and then suddenly switched gears and said that she sure lost a lot of respect for Rudy Giuliani last night.

I didn't catch Rudy's act last night because I was busy cleaning out the cat box, but I guess it must have been a humdinger, eh? But I'm afraid he lost at least one vote for his 2008 presidential bid.

Oh, hey, Arnold is on. Gotta go.