The Clint Eastwood Speech

Personally, I thought Clint's speech was probably the only interesting thing I saw in the convention. And I thought the 82-year Eastwood used a creative, and very memorable, way to drive home his point.

But, therein lies the problem.

It was too memorable, and as a result, a huge strategic blunder, on par with, for example, Mike Dukakis allowing himself to be photographed in that tank (see below).

Think about it — even the right-wing rag, the New York Post, which would love more than anything to see a Republican in the White House, couldn't resist putting Eastwood, not Romney, on its front page the day after what was supposed to be Romney's big night!

What a strategic blunder! And that is what I think is the most important thing to come from the Clint Eastwood speech. It says something not about Eastwood, but about Romney's decision-making capabilities and poor judgement. After all, Romney made the decision to have Eastwood speak right before he did. It also reveals Romney's poor judgment in choosing his campaign staff. Did not one of them think Eastwood might overshadow their candidate? So their misjudgment ended up probably costing their candidate all the positive exposure his biggest speech was supposed to give him.

These types of gaffes are probably more important than any speech in showing us the true capabilities of a candidate. It can be argued that the real value of our incredibly overly long presidential campaigns come in these moments. When mistakes in judgement reveal the real capabilities — or lack thereof in this case — of the candidates.