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There should be one simple rule for how to make a nomination convention a success: don’t let anything distract from the candidate and the message. I assumed this piece of common sense should be self-evident to even a low level campaign worker, but after watching the bizarre spectacle which was the Republican National Convention last night it appears I greatly overestimated the skills of the people running the Romney campaign.
Inviting Clint Eastwood and allowing him to ramble like some weirdo to an empty chair before Romney got to speak was a mind blowingly bad decision. What Eastwood actually said for the most part is politically unimportant but the way his bizarre performance has distracted from Romney is political malpractice.
The day after a candidate’s nomination acceptance speech should be one of the best, if not the best, news cycles for the candidate. If the convention was executed in a semi-competent manner, that next day all the news organization’s big headlines should only be about how the nominee gave a “solid speech which made them look Presidential.” No one really wants to write such a boring headline, but the job of the campaign should be to make sure that boring yet positive headline is the only news there is to report from the event. Instead, by putting Eastwood out there like that, the Romney campaign gave the media a much less boring story.
As a result, the top of Memeorandum today isn’t stories about Romney’s speech, but stories about Eastwood. The main picture on The Hill’s website isn’t single shot of a triumphant Romney but a split screen of him, Paul Ryan and Eastwood. The twitter buzz last night was all Eastwood.
In the grand scheme of things, needlessly wasting one news cycle is a small thing, but the actual campaign is only really about a collection of small things. The campaign team can’t change the big things that dominate an election; the state of the economy, demographics, historical voting patterns, international crisis, etc… all a campaign does is win on the small things. They can only really try to move the needle a few degrees and hope that makes the difference. Last night the Romney campaign made a big unforced error.
27 Comments
The lame explanation that we shouldn’t judge Eastwood through a political lens was incredible. We weren’t judging Eastwood, we were laughing.
Just as you say, the judgment is about the skills, or lack thereof, of the Romney campaign staff. They are incompetent, in addition to being hilariously stupid.
Eastwood should stick to cinema, much as Chuck Norris should stick to karate kicks. Both are far more useful in those capacities than on the political stage.
And ya know, Shatner is without a doubt a Republican as well. Maybe we can look forward to a Republican convention or public event with Romney soon that schedules some improv acting from Shatner just before Romney takes the stage :)
I had to mute the tv during Eastwood’s rambling fake interview with an empty chair. I did turn the sound back on to hear Romney. His speech sucked regardless of Eastwood’s rambling nonsense. In a way, it’s probably better for Romney that analysts like Wolf Blitzer (who prefer to serve as theater critics) have something to talk about other than Romney’s largely empty speech.
The guy who picked these guys who ran this convention? He wants the American people to hand him the nuclear launch codes.
Just sayin’
Shatner? William Shatner? What makes you say he’s a conservative?
I’ll suggest that the Eastwood speaking time just before the big Romney closer could have been sabotage.
I recall a lame performance at the 2004 RNC by the Bush twins (something penned by Karen Hughes) that didn’t stop the American people from letting W keep the nuclear launch codes for four more years…
He was born and raised as a family-values conservative and he is at this point the classic angry old man who yells at the neighbors’ kids to get the hell off his lawn. The man probably sleeps in McCain 2008 pajamas even today. He is also a rich and coddled, and not very smart. The man, if not a Republican, is a proto-Republican volcano waiting to erupt into full mindless glory.
Eastwood was a shrewed choice. There are a lot of old timers that still vote. My father is in his 80s, and he watched Clint Eastwood westerns when I was a kid. Clint’s roll was to let old people know that they are not forgotten and that their corny, relatively senile stories will be accepted if not embraced by the party. The pundits like to talk about how the speakers were African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, and so on. Even if that diversity is not evident in the Tampa convention. Clint Eastwood brought the oldsters (who vote based upon their memories of times gone by — or fabricated in the movies) to the Republican Big Tent. He was accepted by the crowd and not mocked. Unlike all those young turks and radicals who are making fun of him — and are most likely voting for Obama.
I mean that possibly someone, somewhere in the R machine could have wanted to see Mitt’s big moment stolen. It’s not like Romney is a popular R candidate. Republicans usually put on a very savvy show, and this Eastwood thingie was very out of the box for the Republican showmasters.
It’s just a wild speculation that I’m not sure I believe myself, but I’ll put it out there anyway…
Warren Brown, who writes about cars for the Washington Post and keeps things relentlessly apolitical, makes this observation as he begins his online chat today:
Just goes to show how where you stand depends on where you sit. Despite having read Ellison (long ago) I never would have made that connection as Warren Brown did.
Yes, I do recall that as well.
We were A Nation At War, and there’s a fundamental difference, I think, in the mind of the American people between letting the guy who has the codes keep them vs taking them away from someone to entrust them to someone who is both new and demonstrably idiotic in certain areas, as Mitt surely showed this week.
Interesting, “Deadlast” this same message was posted over at the Huffington Post by “Mormon4ever” at least change it up a bit for those of us who read other websites…sweetie :)
Amen on that. Where you sit.
Thank you for sharing that Teddy. Hmmmmm. Yeah.
The use of Clint Eastwood was particularly strange considering the Republicans seemed to try to put an emphasis on their younger “rising star” leaders (e.g., Rubio, Christie, Paul, Martinez, Ayotte and Sandoval who are all statewide elected officials and Cruz who soon will be).
All Clint Eastwood wanted to accomplsh was to tell those of his generation that it’s okay not to vote for somebody they don’t like. The subtlety that he was giving the conventioners and the rest of the Republican voters ‘Dirty Harry’s’ permission not to vote for their party’s candidate that most of them dislike was completely oblivious to both the media and the Romney handlers….
Go ahead, Grandpa, make Clint’s day….
I understand that there’s a video around somewhere of Abe Simpson yelling at a chair [as reflected in the photo above].
Anyone have a link?
Please.
Yep.
Jon, you completely missed the boat.
Had Eastwood not been there, the media would have blabbered on and on about how terrible Romney is and this and that rabid criticism about his speech.
Instead, they are talking about Eastwood and all the negativity has been diverted to Eastwood.
Leaving Romney unscathed.
And, beating Obama to Issac areas to boot.
A brilliant move.
Well actually… Some of us around here were discussing what a good line Romney used when he said that the best part of a presidency shouldn’t be when you vote for the president.
That’s not Abe Simpson, it’s Jon “Batshitcrazy” Voight and they would have had to let him spew if Clint hadn’t been available.
Shouldn’t have a lawyer as prez? Applause. (Excuse me, but rombot went to Harvard Law School, too.)
Politicians suck: they only come around every 4th year looking for $$$. Mumble mumble.
“Go f%$k yourself” says the invisible prez. Laughter. Not once but twice. “O, shut up” from the prez. Mumble mumble.
Okay, invisible obama got it right on Iraq, but why didn’t he ask the Russians about going to war in Afghanistan? Why are we waiting, let’s get out tomorrow! (Is that the rombot secret plan?)
Nobody says you have to like the guy you’re voting for. Don’t like em, don’t vote for em.
Maybe it could possibly be time to vote in a new guy perhaps. (No rousing endorsement there, sports fans!)
There’s more, but nearly bust a gut laughing at the stupidity of the repugs to be clapping and cheering when dis-ing the guy they are all supporting. Weird and weirder.
Not so much surreal as subliminal, that message planted by Eastwood will whisper in the mind of every Republican voter who watched him live last night. Anyone that thinks Eastwood–a multiple Academy Award winner for direction–had not plied all his deep knowlege of stagecraft and messaging to undermine the Romney campaign, well, you just don’t know Clint. He is as sly as any of the characters he’s portrayed….
Today’s Republican Party is filled with Swift Boat Liars. In fact, their convention this week in Tampa should have been called the Swift Boat Liar Convention.
And one of the biggest Republican Swift Boat Liar lies is that President Obama is anti-business, Marxist, Communist, whatever, forgetting that in helping save GM and Chrysler, President Obama and Democrats also saved over 1,000 GM and Chrysler auto-dealerships around America, auto-dealerships, BTW, almost all owned by white males who vote Republican.
Busted. At least you called me sweetie!
(BTW, I have been using both names since about 2006, one on FDL and one on HuffPo (actually it is Mormon4Truth, not 4ever [gave up belief in an eternal corporal polygamous afterlife years ago]). Also, I wrote the post first for FDL so I should get some type of bonus points for coming here first. I guess you go to HuffPo first? ;)
What was so weird was that the idiot Teapublican delegates were laughing at Eastwoods’ disjointed rambling.