August 31st, 2012
I’ve been offline most of the day haven’t kept touch with the congealing opinion on Clint Eastwood’s performance last night. But with 20 hours of distance, the following two thoughts occur to me:
1) The further I get from it, the more I like it. His timing wasn’t perfect, but it was perfect in all the critical spots. And the parts where he missed his timing actually built a sense of mild danger about the performance. I don’t know how it played on TV, but in the arena I kept thinking, Dear God, this thing could go completely off the rails any second. That frisson of disaster narrowly avoided lent the thing a kind of extra spontaneity and power.
Also, I’ve never seen anything like it at a convention. It completely broke the form. That, all by itself, made it interesting and memorable.
2) I think there’s the potential of real political danger in it for the Obama campaign. You could easily–really easily–imagine a world in which the Dems try to rebut it or mock it in Charlotte and instead they actually make the bite deeper. You could also imagine a world in which the empty chair becomes a pop symbol of Obama’s failed presidency. Romney and Ryan could leave an empty chair on every stage they mount. It could be a kind of iconic short-hand for popular disillusionment with Obama’s job performance.
Or, it could just fade into nothing. If I were in the Obama campaign or on the revamped JournoList, I’d tell Democrats and their partisans to pretend the entire thing never happened. Don’t mention it. Don’t mock it. Just ignore it and hope that it evaporates with the rest of the convention ephemera.
Oh, I’ve also got some reconsideration on Dark Knight Rises, having seen it, um, subsequently. That’ll have to wait until Monday.
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Revamped JournoList? What?
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History will record Eastwood’s appearance as the moment when the rise of Obama’s popularity began to recede and our country began to heal.
Clint is for real what Cronkite was alleged to have been.
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Forget the Eastwood thing…it’s the Dark Knight Rises thing reconsideration that’s interesting.
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If I were a betting woman, with a rough idea of the airline schedule for today, I’d guess he was able to reconsider it two more times.
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[…] Charlotte and instead they actually make the bite deeper. You could also imagine a world in which the empty chair becomes a pop symbol of Obama’s failed presidency. Romney and Ryan could leave an empty chair on every stage they mount. It could be a kind of iconic […]
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I think you are a bit prescient with #2. Already there is a video out on “invisible Obama” with an empty chair representing Obama, and song lyrics about how you shouldn’t expect any action from him. People have been calling Obama an empty suit for a while, but the empty chair meme works much better. I can really see Paul Ryan with a chair on the side of the stage.
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I did not see the speech/performance art piece but it couldn’t possibly have been stranger than the Democrat-journo organs rapidly issuing “fact check” protests about an unemployment statistic he’d quoted. Whatever happened to being a dignified or at least pragmatic attack dog? (If only for their own professional sanity.) I would direct them to the advice of Capt. Kirk ca. 1986,”Get a life”
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JournoList must be back, no? How else the immediate coordinated attack on Ryan’s “lies” within hours of his speech? Too good to be true, etc.
red sweater August 31, 2012 at 8:19 pm
What, you think there isn’t one?