A new Public Policy Polling survey in Missouri finds Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) leading embattled challenger Todd Akin (R) by just one point, 45% to 44%.

Key findings: 53% of voters say that they accept Akin’s apology for his comments last week to 40% who do not.

Meanwhile, a Wenzel Strategies survey done for the Family Research Council finds Akin leading 45% to 42%.

Jonathan Cohn: “Paul Ryan’s speech on Wednesday night played well with GOP loyalists in Tampa, with television viewers across the country, and may eventually resonate with the swing voters who will decide the election. But what Ryan actually said last night is objectionable because he was so brazenly willing to twist the truth. At least five times, Ryan misrepresented the facts. And while none of the statements were new, the context was. It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to hear them in a prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee accepting his party’s nomination and speaking to the entire country.”

Ezra Klein: “Ryan’s claims weren’t even arguably true. You simply can’t say the president hasn’t released a deficit reduction plan. The plan is right here. You simply can’t say the president broke his promise to keep your GM plant open. The decision to close the plant was made before he entered office — and, by the way, the guy at the top of your ticket opposed the auto bailout. You simply can’t argue that the Affordable Care Act was a government takeover of the health-care system. My doctor still works for Kaiser Permanente, a private company that the government does not own. You simply can’t say that Obama, who was willing to follow historical precedent and sign a clean debt ceiling increase, caused the S&P downgrade, when S&P clearly said it was due to congressional gridlock and even wrote that it was partly due to the GOP’s dogmatic position on taxes.”

First Read: “We want to make a final point about Ryan’s acceptance speech, and it’s the same one we made yesterday: Don’t get carried away by a strong VP speech; it typically doesn’t have a long shelf life. Think Ferraro in ’84, Bentsen in ’88, Kemp in ’96, Lieberman in ’00, and Edwards in ’04. The exception, of course, is Sarah Palin in ’08. But she isn’t the rule.”

“The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by the Washington Post, on the Republican party’s challenge.

First Read: “If tonight’s speech is to be successful, Romney has to meet four objectives. One, he has to better introduce himself to the American public; it remains striking that after running for president for much of the past five years, voters still don’t have more than a two-dimensional understanding of the soon-to-be nominee. Two, he needs to convince the public that, while he looks the part, he’s the man Americans are comfortable seeing on their TVs for the next four years. Three, he has to try to close the empathy gap; our most recent NBC/WSJ poll found President Obama holding a 22-point advantage on who cares more about average people. And four, he needs to put some meat on the policy bone to make the case how his plans could actually work better than Obama’s — and how they are different from the past Republican administration. If four hours are going to decide this presidential election, the first hour comes tonight.”

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said he would open his speech to the Republican National Convention tonight “with a defense of his brother George because President Obama keeps running him down,” Politico reports.

Said Bush: “I just feel compelled to do this because almost every day I hear the current incumbent feeling compelled to push down the past to make himself look better. When I was growing up, we were spanked when that happened.”

“College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.”

— Rep. Paul Ryan, during his convention speech last night.

Mitt Romney helped secure a federal bailout to keep Bain & Company from collapsing, according to government documents obtained by Rolling Stone.

“Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.”

Charlie Cook: “For whatever reason, his campaign is just now getting around to attempting to establish a personal connection between Romney and the public. That connection cannot be made in a debate; the format doesn’t lend itself to it. Romney desperately needs to leave Tampa having created that relationship.”

“Focus groups show that people perceive Romney as aloof and wonder whether he would even speak to them. His friends say that this is ridiculous, that he’s a terrific guy. But the doubts persist. Tonight is the night Romney needs to fix that.”

A new Gravis survey in Ohio shows President Obama edging Mitt Romney, 45% to 44%.

Nate Silver: “A one-point lead isn’t much, and Mr. Obama has gotten some better numbers than that in Ohio. So why does this qualify as good news for him? Because this firm has had Republican-leaning results in the other states that it has polled, putting Mr. Romney up by 2 points in Florida, 1 point in Colorado and 17 points in Missouri, making it several points more Republican-leaning than the consensus of surveys in those states. Once the model adjusts for the firm’s “house effect,” it treats Mr. Obama’s nominal 1-point lead as being the equivalent of a 4- or 5-point lead instead. Thus, Mr. Obama’s chances of winning Ohio rose somewhat based on the survey.”

The New York Times reports that just after Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race in early 2008, finance titan Julian Robertson “flew to Utah to deliver an eye-popping offer. He asked Mr. Romney to become chief executive of his hedge fund, Tiger Management, for an annual salary of about $30 million, plus investment profits.”

“But Mr. Romney was uninterested. His mind — and his heart — were elsewhere, still trained in the raw days after his political defeat not on Wall Street but on the White House and an urgent quest: to be understood by an electorate that had eluded him.”

Paul Ryan’s “forceful but prosaic acceptance speech on Wednesday
continued one of the campaign’s most surprising strategic twists: the
Republican effort to take the offensive on Medicare,” Ron Brownstein reports.

“Although polls show that Ryan’s proposal to transform Medicare into a
premium-support, or voucher, system still faces enormous public
skepticism, he aggressively insisted that President Obama’s health care
plan represents the real threat to the giant program for the elderly.”

“Ryan’s speech lacked the electricity of Sarah Palin’s show-stopping
acceptance four years ago; in his initial hesitation, he seemed a bit
like a car engine struggling to turn over on a winter Wisconsin morning.
And the fact that Ryan did not attempt, even in passing, to explain his
own Medicare proposal may signal continued uncertainty in his campaign
about its political viability. Instead, by targeting the impact of
Obama’s health care plan on Medicare, he signaled again the campaign’s
belief that the best defense on the issue may be a good offense.”

A Secret Service agent was pulled off Mitt Romney’s campaign plane after accidentally leaving her loaded handgun in the bathroom, the New York Times reports.

“By all accounts, the gun appeared to have been left inadvertently, and Mr. Romney was never considered in any danger. The agent involved stayed behind in Indianapolis to address the matter with her supervisors when Mr. Romney returned to Tampa for the remainder of the Republican National Convention. Romney campaign aides were told about the episode but referred questions to the Secret Service.”

Paul Ryan “gave what was, by almost all accounts, the best speech of the convention so far tonight, running longer than 30 minutes – and past the alloted window from the networks – as he talked about himself, his life, his budgetary approach, his mom, and Mitt Romney,” Maggie Haberman reports.

“It was the most attentive the convention hall at this abbreviated convention, and it was a speech that Republicans – and some Democrats, grudgingly – praised as he was delivering it. He came off young, which he is, but generally not so youthful as to seem off; he was emotional but not soft; he was tough on President Obama but not caustic.”

The Daily Beast has clips from the six best moments.

John Hinderaker: “Ryan laid out the differences between conservatism — the American tradition — on the one hand, and liberalism on the other, as well as anyone ever has.”

Dave Weigel: “Most of the millions of people who watched the speech on television tonight do not read fact-checks or obsessively consume news 15 hours a day, and will never know how much Ryan’s case against Obama relied on lies and deception. Ryan’s pants are on fire, but all America saw was a barn-burner.”

Andrew Sullivan: “If you ignore the details, and wipe your memory like an Etch-A-Sketch, it can sound like a wonderful return to fiscal responsibility. But slashing more taxes for the very wealthy, boosting defense spending, keeping Medicare intact for the current elderly, and gutting Obamacare’s savings is a return to supply side fantasy, not a serious alternative to getting us back to fiscal sanity.”

At the Republican convention last night, “there was indeed a lofty, high-minded speech, one that managed to forcefully articulate a conservative world view without cheap partisan attacks or facts stretched to the breaking point. But it wasn’t Ryan’s — it was delivered by Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state,” Molly Ball reports.

“Rice’s address had a sophistication, ease, and grace almost never found in modern political speeches. It was a speechwriter’s speech, the kind you could imagine reading in a history book. She spoke with a diplomat’s formality and the teleprompter turned off, glancing only occasionally at her notes on the podium. “

E. J. Dionne: “Maybe it’s unfair to say so because former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice didn’t have to carry any water as a member of the Republican ticket. But her speech to the Republican National Convention was more serious and, yes, more presidential than any other speech on Wednesday night. She outshined Paul Ryan.”

“Sometimes they just make things up.”

— President Obama, quoted by the New York Times, commenting on the strategy of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.