Walter Patterson Herald ColumnistClint Eastwood’s little skit at the Republican National Convention has sparked an avalanche of comments, both positive and negative.  The mainstream media pounced on Eastwood declaring that he was an old man who  had clearly lost his mind.  I’m sure that most of these media types did not know before the speech that Eastwood was a long-time conservative.  But “Dirty Harry” held nothing back.  
When I saw Eastwood walk on stage, I immediately thought that he was going to give a conventional speech, one where he stood at the podium and read from a teleprompter.  But that was not to be.  Shortly after he began, he looked over to an empty chair and addressed it as though Obama himself was seated there.
The performance was hilarious – and creative.  Soon, the audience was doubled over with laughter, and Eastwood had made his point.  Not only is Obama an “empty chair,” he is also an “empty suit.”
“We have 23 million people unemployed in this country, and this is a national disgrace,” he declared.  Who could disagree?  The opening day of the Democrat National Convention saw the national debt top $16 trillion.  This is money that your grandchildren and mine will have to repay.  According to Bloomberg News, every family in America now owes more than $136,000 to the government in order to retire our debt, and this is money that the government has absolutely no hope of collecting.
Eastwood continued.  “We own this country.  Politicians are our employees.  If they can’t perform, we have to let them go.”  These are simple truths that clear-thinking Americans instinctively know and understand.  The president has not done the job we hired him to do; consequently, we must let him go.
The Democrats, even four years after he left office, want to blame George Bush for our economic problems.  They won’t tell the truth and confess that the recession was caused by Democrat policies governing the housing market.  Bill Clinton and Janet Reno forced banks to lend money to people who had no means of paying the money back.  As a result, the housing market collapsed, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were left holding the bag for billions of dollars, and the house of cards began to crumble.  Probably the most culpable Democrat in this financial collapse was Barney Frank, the far-left Democrat representative who headed the House Banking Committee.  Everything this man did – everything, assured that the housing market would collapse.  President Bush warned this dullard no less than 17 times that if changes were not made,  an economic recession was unavoidable.
But back to Eastwood.  Everything that Obama did as president made the situation worse.  Instead of solving the financial crisis, he insisted that Obamacare be enacted into law with its 21 separate tax increases.   Of course, the trillion dollar stimulus failed along with the bailout of the automobile industry.  General Motors owes more than $25 billion to the government with no hope of paying it back.  What Obama did was simply postpone the inevitable – and nationalize the automobile industry.  Have you seen GM’s stock price lately?  Have you noticed the price of gasoline?  All of these disasters can be laid at the feet of Mr. Obama.  Americans have elected an inexperienced man to the most demanding job in the world.  Obama simply cannot  fill the presidential chair.  It is much too big.
Actors memorize lines for a living.  Eastwood had memorized his carefully.  He said exactly what he intended to say the way he intended to say it.  He suffers neither from senility nor from Alzheimer’s.  He was funny.  He was entertaining. He was brilliant.  Most of all, he put Mr. Obama in a place where Americans know he should be – in an empty chair.  
Bravo, Clint Eastwood.  Bravo!