Eastwood Redux

I suppose because the real Barack Obama was a less viable target for the Republican's aspiring to supplant him in 2012, the primary season bore witness to the creation of a "Straw Man" version of the President. Over and over again, from the mouths of everyone from Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to Michelle Bachman, the candidates took turns blasting away at a President and a set of policies that did not and never had existed. Cheers rang the halls where stood the GOP aspirants as they pointed at the fictitious Barack Obama and condemned him for being a socialist, for being a "baby killer", for not being born in the United States, for being a Muslim who was secretly the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and for conspiring to strip fine law abiding Americans of their right to carry a WMD in their pockets. Listening to this lunacy we took solace in the expectation that because so many of these candidates were playing to the lunatic political fringes of our society, the hyperbole would quiet once a candidate emerged and the true campaign started. Boy were we wrong.

Not only did the "Straw Man" version of Barack Obama not exit left, but he, in fact, became front and center at the recently completed Republican convention. Nothing could have more perfectly underscored the fear of the Republican party running against the real President and his real policies than the sight of Clint Eastwood speaking to an empty chair upon which sat an invisible President who, in much the same fashion that Michelle Bachmann and her cohorts lambasted the President during the primary season for all of his fictitious failings, was then lampooned by Mr. Eastwood much to the delight of the assembled hordes. The performance by Mr. Eastwood was not the actions of a doddering old fool. This is, after all, one of our leading movie makers and actors who continues to deliver some of the most powerful films of our day. No, Mr. Eastwood's performance perfectly encapsulated what has been apparent to anyone who is not part of the base to which this tragi-comedy is directed...that because the Republicans and Mr. Romney realize that they cannot take on an actual Barack Obama, they have to make one up and then expend tens of millions of dollars to convince the unconvinced that the fictitious Obama is real and the real Obama is fictitious. 

One can only hope that when Mr. Romney is forced to stand beside the actual Barack Obama and not the invisible, foul-mouthed one dragged onto the stage of the RNC convention by Mr. Eastwood,  that Mr. Romney will be forced to address the real President, his real policies and his real plans for the future. There are, without any doubt, questions...real questions...that should be asked an answered by the President about his policies and his plans. The American people are entitled to those answers, but so too is the electorate entitled to have a choice between two candidates who base their positions on the facts and in reality. To this point, Mr. Romney has not shown an willingness to deal with the facts and with the reality of those facts. One can only hope that the President will leave Mr. Romney no choice but to finally engage the real Barack Obama.