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Eastwood seemed to thrill the audience with his celebrity and swagger, drawing cheers and chortles — even if some of the laughter seemed of the nervous variety, of the sort one gives an elderly uncle at the Thanksgiving table in the middle of a story that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“I just don’t like to see people make fun of somebody like that — no matter who it is,” said Tom Fortiwiecz from Cleveland. “It was too much.”

A Romney campaign spokesperson defended Eastwood’s performance in this statement: “Judging an American icon like Clint Eastwood through a typical political lens doesn’t work.

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What a mammoth fucck up/ miscalculation that was by Team Romney, allowing old man Eastwood to ramble on, and on, and on -- to make believe/ invisible Obama. Congrats on that one Team Romney lol

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It's obvious you don't understand politics. How can anyone doubt that the morning after the most important speech in Mitt Romney's life, the RNC's goal was to have the headlines and talk the next day be about Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair?

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...Romney’s campaign aides asked for details about what Eastwood would say to the convention.

“They vet most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say,’” Eastwood recalled.

And while the Hollywood superstar has plenty of experience being adored by crowds, he said he hasn’t given a lot of speeches and admitted that, “I really don’t know how to.” He also hates using a teleprompter, so it was settled in his mind that when he spoke to the 10,000 people in the convention hall, and the millions more watching on television, he would do it extemporaneously.


Early Thursday morning, when Eastwood left San Jose Airport on a private jet headed for Florida, he was still making up his mind. And even with his appearance just a few hours away, all Eastwood could tell Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, and his aides, was “to reassure them that everything I would say would be nice about Mitt Romney.”

It was only after a quick nap in his hotel room a few blocks from the convention site, Eastwood said, that he mapped out his remarks — starting with his observation about politics in Hollywood, then challenging the president about the failure of his economic policies, and wrapping up by telling the public “they don’t have to worship politicians, like they were royalty or something.”

But even then, with just an hour before he appeared on stage, it still hadn’t occurred to Eastwood to use an empty chair as a stand-in for the president.

“I got to the convention site just 15 or 20 minutes before I was scheduled to go on,” he said. “That was fine, because everything was very well organized.”

After a quick trip through airport-style security, he was taken to a Green Room, where Archbishop Dolan of New York sought him out to say hello. Then he was taken backstage to wait for his cue. And that was when inspiration struck.

“There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down,” Eastwood said. “When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.”

He asked a stagehand to take it out to the lectern while he was being announced.

“The guy said, ‘You mean you want it at the podium?’ and I said, ‘No, just put it right there next to it.’”

But the country was listening as the television reporters and commentators covering his speech reacted to it. And they hated it.

“I have to say, as a fan, a movie fan, this was exceedingly strange. It just seemed like a very strange, unscripted moment,” said a shocked Andrea Mitchell on NBC.

“That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life,” said Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, barely concealing the condescension in her voice.

Bob Schieffer of CBS said it was “a big mistake to put Clint Eastwood on before Mitt Romney.”

On the Washington Post website, reporter Chris Cillizza wrote that “‘awkward’ may be the kindest term we can think of” to describe Eastwood’s speech.

“He hemmed. He hawed. He mumbled. He rambled,” Cillizza wrote.

And on CNN, Piers Morgan said Eastwood was “going bonkers” on the stage and said his presentation “looked like complete chaos.”

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, called Eastwood “the perfect icon of the Republican tea party: an angry old white man spewing incoherent nonsense.”

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