Eastwood, Akin, Isaac and the Republican’s Media Campaign

Well, no one said presidential campaigns were easy but, at least from a public relations and media perspective, the Republicans have had an exceptionally tough couple of weeks.  First they had one of their own eclipse Mitt Romney in the media when Todd Akin, a Republican congressman running for the Senate in Missouri, stated: ‘from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  Not exactly a quote you want associated with any political party as it’s ramping up for the convention.

Next hurricane Isaac had the convention start one day later than planned and received much of the coverage on the second day and then on the closing night of the convention when presidential hopeful Mitt Romney gave his address to the nation, Clint Eastwood delivered perhaps the most bizarre eleven minutes in campaign history.  The upshot being that most of the conversation at the end of the Republican convention was about Eastwood’s speech not Romney’s.  The now famous empty chair speech was originally scheduled for 3 ½ minutes, but it ran for almost 12 minutes of primetime coverage.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer said it was a political disaster, shifting attention from the candidate to a loopy actor addressing an empty chair. His colleague Norah O’Donnell, stated it was the “not good, the bad and the very ugly.”

Newsweek’s take was bit different: “we got Clint and it was electrifying — a glorious, bizarre, fun, wild, weird, kooky, incendiary moment that threatened to throw the entire convention into a complete tailspin — and just before the nominee spoke. Now THAT’S entertainment, friends.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said, “the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life … and it will be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen if I live to be a hundred.” Fox News’ Chris Wallace took a different approach saying, “Let me say that I get paid to review politicians. There’s no way I’m going to touch Clint Eastwood’s performance tonight.”

Seconds after Eastwood finished his speech, the Twitter world responded in mass. Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics tweeted: “I’d feel better if I knew for sure that Clint doesn’t see anyone in the chair. “

Granted the speech made for great entertainment.  Eastwood seemed to be having a good time and the audience was responsive, but is that the story that the Romney administration wanted the media to focus on?

The bottom line when it comes to running a presidential campaign is that you want to be able to control the message, or at the very least stay in front of the story and keep the campaign’s talking points front and center.  There is not much a political party can do about a hurricane, but Akin’s statements and particularly Eastwood’s performance was definitely controllable.  A three minute prerecorded video presentation would have both featured Eastwood and assured a controlled message.

So, the Republicans have had a rough time as of late.  The Democratic national convention comes next.  We’ll see how they do on the media relations front.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2012

Fang Zhe, Xinhua / Landov. “lint Eastwood speaks to the audience during the Republican National Convention in Tampa on August 30.” Photo. The Daily Beast. 1 Sept 2012. 1 Sept 2012. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/01/clint-eastwood-s-rnc-speech-ben-affleck-and-other-hollywood-insiders-react.html&gt;