The Republicans have been talking tough all week about why it is time to replace Barack Obama as president, but before Mitt Romney’s speech accepting his party’s nomination Thursday night, they sought to bring out a really big gun: Clint Eastwood.
The 82-year-old actor who has honed tough guy into high art with his Spaghetti Westerns (“The Good, the Bad & the Ugly”), the “Dirty Harry” series, “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby,” rambled through remarks that included an imaginary exchange with Obama (an empty chair) and ended with a call-and-response after someone in the audience yelled out to him to utter his most famous line: “Go ahead; make my day.”
Eastwood criticized Obama for failing to fix the economy, escalating the war in Afghanistan without consulting the Russians about how that worked out for them (10 years and no victory) and thinking about closing Guantanamo Bay prison and trying terrorism suspects in federal court in New York.
After sounding at times as if he didn’t want to hit Obama too hard, Eastwood finally brought the crowd to its feet by saying that being likable isn’t enough to be president.
“And when someone does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go,” Eastwood said.
“We don’t have to be mental masochists to vote for somebody that we don’t really want just because they seem to be nice guys, or not nice guys, if you look at some of the recent ads going out there, I don’t know.”
He also seemed to go off script at times, suggesting that party isn’t important and that politicians, generally, were just out for votes.
“I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important,” Eastwood said. “It is that, you, we—we own this country. We—we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.
“And—so—they are just going to come around and beg for votes every few years. It is the same old deal. But I just think it is important that you realize that you’re the best in the world. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or whether you’re libertarian or whatever, you are the best. And we should not ever forget that.”
“What I don’t understand is how Romney team running such a tightly scripted convention would allow Eastwood to go off the cuff like that,” tweeted “Meet the Press” host David Gregory.
On Twitter and Facebook, instead of seeing a strong, tough guy take it to the president and the Democratic party, many who posted expressed surprise and sadness, saying Eastwood looked old, lost and not particularly effective at arguing the case for why Romney should be president.
But maybe you had to be there: PBS’ “Washington Week in Review” host Gwen Ifill tweeted that Eastwood’s remarks were “Perhaps the most curious speech of the night. But they’re eating it up in the hall.”
Jackie Jones, a journalist and journalism educator, is director of the career transformation firm Jones Coaching LLC and author of “Taking Care of the Business of You: 7 Days to Getting Your Career on Track.”
