Give 'em hell, Zell! But, uh, not like that.

Zell, Zell, Zell....

You absolutely hit your convention speech out of the park. A grand slam! You had the crowd eating out of the palm of your hand. You reeled off a devastating list of weapons programs that Kerry has voted against. There were priceless slams against Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, and the United Nations, three liberal icons whose time has long since passed. Absolutely brilliant! And then....

...you totally blow your cool with Chris Matthews on MSNBC later that night. I admit, I've wanted more than a few guests to tell that rude, serial interrupter to shut his trap. But Matthews was playing fair (relatively speaking), and to tell him to "shut up" and to threaten to "get up in his face" (Matthews was outside the convention hall, Miller was inside) is just not kosher. You genuinely looked and spoke as though you wanted to smack Matthews. That's not cool. You've got to play it cool. Conservatives generally play it a lot cooler and level-headed than they get credit for, but Miller let the side down with that interview. Or rather, the other side down, since he is a Democrat.

Which is not to say that Matthews didn't embarrass himself. Consider this exchange:

Matthews: Do you believe, Senator, truthfully, that John Kerry wants to defend the country with spitballs? Do you believe that?

Miller: That was a metaphor, wasn't it? Do you know what a metaphor is?

Matthews: Well, what do you mean by a metaphor?

This brought back memories of Senator Bob Kerrey's absurdly literal-minded approach to questioning Condoleezza Rice during the 9/11 Commission hearings. He even did it Matthews-style, with constant interruptions:

KERREY: You've used the phrase a number of times, and I'm hoping with my question to disabuse you of using it in the future. You said the president was tired of swatting flies.

KERREY: Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to Al Qaida prior to 9/11?

RICE: I think what the president was speaking to was...

KERREY: No, no. What fly had he swatted?

RICE: Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on...

KERREY: No, no...

RICE: ... when the CIA would go after Abu Zubaydah...

KERREY: He hadn't swatted...

RICE: ... or go after this guy...

KERREY: Dr. Rice, we didn't...

RICE: That was what was meant.

KERREY: We only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?

RICE: We swatted at -- I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after individual terrorists here and there, and that's what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech.

A figure of speech: how's that for a concept?

I have more to say about Zell and the rest of the convention, but I'll get to that later.

-Dave O'Connell