TAMPA, Fla. — For all the finger-pointing about Clint Eastwood’s rambling conversation with an empty chair on Thursday night, the most bizarre, head-scratching 12 minutes in recent political convention history were set in motion by Mitt Romney himself and made possible by his aides, who had shrouded the actor’s appearance in secrecy.
Clint Eastwood pretended to be speaking with President Obama, seated next to him.
Mr. Romney privately invited Mr. Eastwood, of “Dirty Harry” fame, to speak after the actor had given him a gravelly, full-throated endorsement at a star-studded fund-raiser at the Sun Valley Resort Lodge in Idaho this summer. “He just made my day. What a guy,” Mr. Romney joked with his donors that night, flanked by the fake log columns of the lodge.
Thus began an effort by Mr. Romney’s campaign over several weeks to inject a Hollywood-style surprise into the highly scripted, tightly controlled convention where Mr. Romney would formally accept the nomination of the Republican Party to be president.
Behind the scenes, Mr. Eastwood’s convention cameo was cleared by Mr. Romney’s top message mavens, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, who drew up talking points that Mr. Eastwood included, in his own way. They gave him a time limit and flashed a blinking red light that told him his time was up. He ignored both. The actor’s decision to use a chair as a prop was last-minute, and his own.
“The prop person probably thought he was going to sit in it,” a baffled senior aide said on Thursday night.
Mr. Eastwood’s rambling and off-color appearance just moments before the biggest speech of Mr. Romney’s life instantly became a Twitter and cable-news sensation, which drowned out much of the usual postconvention analysis that his campaign had hoped to bask in.
It also startled and unsettled Mr. Romney’s top advisers and prompted a blame game among them. “Not me,” an exasperated-looking senior adviser said when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood’s speech. In interviews, aides called the speech “strange” and “weird.” One described it as “theater of the absurd.”
Ann Romney, who made the rounds of the three network morning shows, hardly pretended that she was happy as she was repeatedly asked about the speech. “I was thrilled for his support,” she said on NBC, trying to be positive. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said on MSNBC that he “cringed” as he sat in the hall during Mr. Eastwood’s performance.
The speech was a reminder of how fleeting a successful political moment can be, and how carefully staged events can be upset by an unpredictable turn. And it suggested a slip-up inside the button-down, corporate-style headquarters of the Romney campaign in Boston.
Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks. For Mr. Eastwood, the convention speech was a bit part in a career that has had its political moments. Angered by zoning laws he did not like, he served one two-year term as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in California. In 1988, George Bush briefly considered choosing him as his running mate; he picked Dan Quayle instead.
During the weeks after Mr. Romney extended the invitation in Idaho, the actor’s role in the convention lineup was kept secret. On the public schedule, his slot was listed as “to be announced.”
As the last night of the convention approached, planners tried to keep a lid on the story even as Mr. Eastwood’s name leaked out on the Internet, hoping his appearance would be the good kind of a surprise, not the bad kind.
“If we announced it, it wouldn’t be a mystery anymore,” Mr. Schriefer told reporters, playfully.
Another adviser said that several top aides had reviewed the talking points given to Mr. Eastwood just a few hours before his appearance. They included a request to mention the millions of people who remain unemployed — something Mr. Eastwood did, though he misstated the number.
As actors sometimes do, he improvised.
Instead of reading off a teleprompter — something Mr. Eastwood is said to despise — he pretended to have a sarcasm-filled conversation with President Obama, seated by his side.
“What do you mean, shut up?” Mr. Eastwood said, mumbling to a befuddled audience. A moment later, he stopped again, saying, “What do you want me to tell Mr. Romney?”
“I can’t tell him that. He can’t do that to himself,” Mr. Eastwood said. “You’re getting as bad as Biden.”
Initially, there were no plans for Mr. Eastwood to take a chair onstage. But at the last minute, the actor asked the production staff backstage if he could use one but did not explain why.
Had Mr. Eastwood appeared earlier, many fewer people might have noticed. The networks began their hour of convention coverage at 10 p.m. Eastern time, which meant that Mr. Eastwood was the first act of the night for their millions of viewers.
He was scheduled to speak for about five minutes but stayed onstage for more than twice as long, throwing off the schedule for Mr. Romney.
Mr. Stevens, in an interview, said he would not discuss internal decision making, but he said that Mr. Romney was backstage during Mr. Eastwood’s remarks.
“He spoke from the heart with a classic improv sketch which everyone at the convention loved,” Mr. Stevens said, calling it “an honor that a great American icon would come and talk about the failure of the current president.”
Rush Limbaugh called Mr. Eastwood’s performance “bold.” But other members of the party faithful were not so sure. As they flew home from Tampa on Friday, some delegates grumbled that Mr. Eastwood was a waste of a prime-time slot that might have been better used to feature other speakers or the biographical video of Mr. Romney’s life.
Mr. Eastwood is generally liked and respected in Hollywood, where his colleagues often do not agree with his politics. Leonard Hirshan, Mr. Eastwood’s manager, said the actor was traveling and would not be available for interviews.
Mr. Hirshan said he had heard a chorus of response since the speech, divided evenly between those supportive and those critical. Mr. Eastwood’s next film, “Trouble With the Curve,” is set for release on Sept. 21.
“He does these things for himself,” Mr. Hirshan said. “It’s his private life. He believes in what he’s doing.”
Many gay guys, in particular, don't seem to grasp the importance of marriage rights. But they are really important to all gay people, even those who have NO intention whatsoever of ever marrying another man. Most of the inequality toward gay people built into law is based on the concept that gay people can't get married and can't have kids and therefore don't deserve equal treatment. The end of the marriage ban effectively eliminates the legal basis for discrimination. It's kind of a final hurdle, and it's why civil unions aren't good enough.
As for me personally, I am looking for work and have sent out quite a few resumes, but at my age and with a rather specialized and limited skill set, there just isn't much out there.
As for your question, of course poor people don't directly create jobs. However, why should we give someone (i.e., a wealthy person) a tax cut just on the promise they *might* create jobs? That doesn't make sense. If you're going to give a tax break for job creation, do it afterward, by reducing the tax on money that was actually spent for job creation.
Now, I have a question for you.
Why should I vote for a Republican for president?
I'm a 56-year-old man who probably makes an average to maybe a little below average wage. I make less than the average schoolteacher in this area, if that gives you an idea. I'm also in a field where I face imminent layoff. In fact, if I last another year, I'll be surprised. And once laid off, I could very well be without health insurance until I qualify for Medicare.
On top of that, of course, I'm an out gay man.
As far as I can tell, there is no reason whatsoever for me to vote Republican. A GOP win would severely slow the pace of gay rights gains, as well as kill Obamacare, which might be the only chance I would have to get health insurance.
Voting for the GOP just isn't in my own self-interest, and isn't that the way most Americans in theory vote?
And cmon. Except perhaps for their servants, how many rich people actually directly create jobs? Companies and businesses do the vast majority of hiring in the U.S. And except in small business, which most of the wealthy are not involved in, people are not investing their own incomes into the company.
If you want to argue that rich people use their money to create jobs, it would only be indirectly, by investing in the stock market and the like. But how much of that REALLY goes to job creation? It's mostly about creating wealth for themselves and their brokers. Wealth is not and does not trickle down in this country. Otherwise, how could the upper 1% continue to keep acquiring a higher and higher percentage of national wealth? If it were trickling down, the percentage would stay closer to constant.
You could just as easily say that average Americans contribute to job creation by putting money in 401(k)s and with their purchasing decisions.
I really don't understand why GOPers are bitching so much about raising taxes on a relatively small number of the wealthiest taxpayers. That's right, Republicans still believe in the "trickle down" myth. Haven't you figured out that that is just the storyline to rationalize letting extremely wealthy political donors pocket a substantially bigger share of their money than people who work at Walmart?
The extremely wealthy for the most part do little to contribute to job creation. Their extra millions go into making even more millions on the stock market.