Double Down: Game Change 2012 (59 page)

Ryan tried to calm his nerves on Wednesday by watching movies with his wife in his hotel—but the gambit had the opposite effect. By sheer coincidence, they happened to catch an airing of the HBO film
Game Change,
about Palin’s travails. Ryan was riveted, but soon regretted it. What the hell was I doing watching
that
? he asked Senor later.

In his speech that night, Ryan didn’t prove to be the magnetic performer that Palin was. But the hall embraced him anyway. Both in the building and in the broader precincts of Right Nation, Ryan’s anti-Barack bon mots—including a pointed barb about dispirited college graduates “staring up at fading Obama posters,” wondering when they would find a job—were gobbled up like bonbons. The problem for Boston was that Ryan’s speech, like Christie’s, did little to present Romney in a new light. That task would basically be reserved for (or relegated to) the convention’s final evening.

The reintroduction began a little after 8:30 p.m. on Thursday night, and
was so compelling that many wondered why it hadn’t started weeks or months earlier. Ann and Tagg had pushed for the inclusion of personal testimonials, helping Schriefer and his team identify people who could attest to Mitt’s character. Leading the way were the Oparowskis, Ted and Pat, an elderly couple who told the story of their leukemia-stricken son, David, and how Romney, whom they knew through church, visited the dying fourteen-year-old, helped him write a will, and gave the eulogy at his funeral. Pam Finlayson told the story of her daughter, born prematurely with brain damage. Romney, Finlayson’s clergyman, visited the girl in the ICU, where he “didn’t just see a tangle of plastic and tubes—he saw our beautiful little girl, and was clearly overcome with compassion for her.”

The Oparowskis and Finlayson brought many in the hall to tears. They were followed by Bob White, at last allowed to shine a light on the nobility of Bain. The work of White and his SWAT team was featured in two videos, which made the case that Mitt was a job creator, not a ruthless corporate raider. Tom Stemberg, the boss of Staples, proclaimed that Romney “knew the value of a dollar.” Ray Fernandez, the Hispanic CEO of Vida Pharmacy, declared, “My life today is better because of Bain Capital.” Jane Edmonds, an African American liberal Democrat who served under Romney in the Bay State, extolled his virtues. Three Olympians did the same. They were followed by a ten-minute biographical video that even the Obamans conceded was a thing of beauty.

Altogether, the humanization of Romney consumed close to two hours. By any standard, it was a supremely effective stretch of political stagecraft. The only trouble was that none of it appeared in the prime-time broadcast hour, so it was seen only by the comparatively tiny cable TV audience.

In terms of time, Schriefer’s flexibility was limited. Almost the entirety of the 10:00 p.m. hour would be swallowed up by the night’s marquee speeches: Marco Rubio and Romney. That left about seven minutes to work with. He had considered filling them with the bio video, but network producers told him they would not run it, using the airtime for commentary instead. Under other circumstances, Schriefer might have been willing to gamble that they would change their minds. But not when he had an ace up his sleeve: a guest star so glamorous and iconic that the cameras would find it impossible to turn away.

•   •   •

C
LINT EASTWOOD’S PRESENCE
in Tampa was supposed to be a surprise, but in the late afternoon, the convention orchestra started practicing the theme to
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
—and the jig was up. Eastwood’s appearance had come together in less than a month. Boston’s desire to have him onstage was driven by many impulses: the quest for ratings, the yen for excitement, and a degree of political logic. Yet the idea would never have been on the table at all had Romney not been starstruck.

Mitt first met the eighty-two-year-old star in late July in Carmel, California, the seaside town near Monterey Bay where Dirty Harry had once been the mayor. A Romney donor, former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, arranged a dinner for Mitt and Ann with Eastwood, his wife, Dina, McNealy, and McNealy’s wife, Susan, at Eastwood’s Tehama Golf Club. The club was closed, but Clint brought in a chef, and the six of them had a ball. Romney was struck by how much Eastwood-in-the-flesh was like the celluloid version.
He looks like Clint Eastwood, he sounds like Clint Eastwood—hey, it’s Clint Eastwood!
Mitt thought.
And that Dina—what a hoot! This is just so . . . cool!

It had already occurred to Romney how terrific it would be to lure the actor to Tampa. Earlier in the year, Eastwood had appeared in a Super Bowl ad for Chrysler called “Halftime in America,” which many conservatives viewed as a tacit endorsement of Obama and the auto bailout. Having Eastwood at the convention would be a chance to recapture the flag. Without asking directly, Romney started to bait the hook. Look, I’d love your help, he told Clint. I’d like to stay in touch.

On August 3, Eastwood turned up in a battered Jeep Wagoneer at a Romney fund-raiser in Sun Valley. Mitt called him up onstage. “I was doing a picture in the early 2000s called
Mystic River
in his home state,” Eastwood said of Romney. “I said, God, this guy is too handsome to be governor, but he does look like he could be president. As the years have gone by, I’m beginning to think even more so that. He’s going to restore a decent tax system that we need badly so that there is a fairness and people are not pitted against one another of who’s paying taxes and who isn’t. Also, we don’t want anybody taking away the Olympic medals, taxwise, from the Olympic athletes. The government is talking about getting a couple of nickels. It’s now more
important than ever that we need Governor Romney, and I’m going to be voting for him, as I know most of you will be. We’ve got to just spread the word and get the whole country behind this, because it’s going to be an exciting election.”

Taking back the microphone, Romney said excitedly, “He just made my day—what a guy!”

Romney instructed his team to try to make the convention thing happen. “Clint doesn’t say a lot, but he says it well, and he’s a big presence,” Mitt explained. It would make a difference in places like Michigan and Ohio. We don’t have many Hollywooders on our team. It would be great to have
him
.

Schriefer planned to have Eastwood speak on Wednesday, but the compression of the schedule pushed the star’s appearance to Thursday. That morning, Eastwood and the McNealys boarded Scott’s private jet in San Jose and headed to Tampa. The Romneyites had conveyed that they wanted Clint to speak for five to seven minutes and say something similar to what he’d said in Sun Valley. Eastwood, however, was playing it loose; McNealy, even looser. The tech executive was an ardent libertarian and Obama scold. He had made a top-ten list of Clint’s movies with politically incorrect subtitles that skewered the president, and showed it to Eastwood on the plane. Clint got a kick out of that.

On the ground in Tampa, the traveling party made its way to the Marriott in a black SUV. At the security checkpoints and in the hotel, cops and Secret Service agents greeted Eastwood like a hero: Hey! Clint!
In the Line of Fire
!

“Would you take a bullet?” Eastwood growled back, quoting one of the movie’s signature lines.

Schriefer, Stevens, and Zwick paid a call on the star in his hotel suite late in the afternoon. Eastwood’s turn onstage was a few hours away, and Schriefer still wasn’t sure they were on the same page regarding content. Eastwood had brought a DVD with him and played it for the Romney people. It featured a clip from
The Outlaw Josey Wales,
in which the Native American character Ten Bears says, “It’s sad that governments are chiefed by the double-tongues.”

You can use that for my introduction if you want, Eastwood said.

Um, thanks for that, Schriefer said, but we’re all set on your intro. Let’s talk about what you’re going to say. He reminded Eastwood of the Idaho fund-raiser, suggesting that he use the
Mystic River
line again, as well as throwing out a few others. (“Last time you heard from me, it was halftime in America. Now we’re at the two-minute warning. We need Mitt Romney.”) Eastwood nodded and said little. Schriefer also reminded him of the tight time constraints, and asked if he wanted to use notes or the teleprompter. Eastwood said nope to both.

Schriefer reassured himself that it would be fine:
He does award shows all the time, knows his way around a camera—he’s Clint Eastwood, for heaven’s sake.

Two of Schriefer’s colleagues didn’t share his sanguineness. Gillespie thought it was madness to put anyone—
anyone
—onstage in the most important hour of the convention without a script. It’s a big risk, he told Schriefer, and I wouldn’t do it, but it’s not my call. Kevin Madden had been at the Sun Valley event and couldn’t understand why anyone would want a repeat. Eastwood’s remarks had been rambling, his offstage behavior erratic. (Romney’s traveling aides were convinced that Clint had had a few pops and flirted with a female finance-team staffer.) When Madden was consulted about which morning shows Eastwood should be booked on for Friday, his answer was blunt: none of them.

Up in his suite at the Marriott, Eastwood was still noodling over his remarks. He turned on the radio, tuned in an oldies station, and heard Neil Diamond singing “I Am . . . I Said.” Clint liked Neil, but the lyrics pulled him up short: “I am, I said, to no one there. And no one heard at all, not even the chair.”
What a dumb line,
Eastwood thought.
Talking to an inanimate object!

Eastwood arrived at the hall ninety minutes before he was supposed to go on, and was stashed away in a private holding room backstage. Schriefer popped in and checked with him again, running down the key directives one more time: five minutes, Sun Valley redux, etc.

Eastwood said, “Yep.” But the truth of it was, he was having other ideas.

Watching the onstage proceedings on a monitor, taking in the humanization of Romney, Clint thought,
Everybody’s just saying, “We love Mitt.” I don’t want to be the tenth guy up there saying the same thing. It’s obvious I like Mitt, or I wouldn’t be here. I want to say something . . . different.
When a staffer asked if he wanted some powder for his face, Eastwood said no. “I want to
shine.
”

Standing in the wings a few minutes before his entrance, “I Am . . . I Said” reentered Eastwood’s mind.
Hey, you know, there’s something there,
he thought.

Eastwood asked a stagehand, Hey, do you have a stool?

Sure, the stagehand said, and quickly presented Clint with two options: one with a back and one without.

“I like that one,” Eastwood said, pointing to the model with a back. Could you put it on onstage before I go out? Just to the left of the podium? Thanks.

The roar in the hall was deafening when he strode out there, with a Josey Wales silhouette on the massive screens behind him. Two minutes later, Eastwood motioned to the chair and said, “I’ve got Mr. Obama sitting here; I was going to ask him a couple of questions.” And then launched into an imaginary colloquy with the president. At times borderline profane (“What do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him to do that. He can’t do that to himself”), at times meandering, it was partly an homage to Bob Newhart and 100 percent Dada dinner theater. And it was just getting going when Eastwood passed the five-minute mark.

Romney and Stevens were watching Eastwood together backstage. The candidate seemed to think it was funny—at least at first. “Did you guys practice this?” he asked Stevens.

“No,” Stevens said. “I have no idea what he’s doing.”

Stevens’s head was exploding at the sight of the disaster occurring onstage. (
He’s gone insane!)
Not wanting to upset Mitt, Stevens excused himself, went into another room, and vomited.

Schriefer was on the convention floor. When he first saw the stagehand bring out the chair, he thought,
That’s odd.
Now he was in a state of panic. Rushing backstage to the control room to try to give Eastwood the hook, he ran into Stevens—who started screaming, This is terrible! It’s a car crash!

Schriefer attempted to calm Stevens down. Stevens would not be calmed. As Eastwood kept going—past seven minutes, eight minutes, nine minutes,
ten minutes—Stevens lost all control. He was throwing things, howling, cursing, and weeping, until he dropped his head into his hands.

The reaction of the Romneyites out in the hall was only mildly less operatic. Their in-boxes were flooded with e-mails from reporters. Twitter was exploding with shock, bafflement, and ridicule.

“What the fuck
is
this?” Fehrnstrom exclaimed to Rhoades.

“I don’t know!” Rhoades replied, and called Schriefer. Dude, dude, dude—get him off!

Eastwood finally exited the stage after twelve excruciating minutes, which he concluded with the only pre-approved line that he delivered: “Make my day.” Though the audience in the hall laughed at some of his jokes, the tone of the reception had shifted as Eastwood went on and on. No longer enraptured, the crowd seemed nervous for him—as if they were rooting for a doddering uncle as he struggled through a wedding toast, and were relieved when he yielded back the mic.

Twenty minutes later, an earnest Rubio come and gone, Romney paraded through the hall and mounted the rostrum with a new challenge before him: not just to give a knockout speech, but to obliterate the memory of Eastwood. It was a tall order. The speechwriting chaos had continued right up through Thursday, with Romney still making last-minute edits late that afternoon. (
This may not be put to bed until
after
it’s delivered,
Romney thought.) His aides weren’t sure whether Mitt had done a single run-through with the final text.

In a blue suit, red tie, and white shirt, Romney spoke for thirty-nine minutes. His performance was workmanlike in every detail. He bashed his rival with gusto: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet; my promise is to help you and your family.” He offered plainspoken language about the economy: “What America needs is jobs—lots of jobs.” He made references to his faith and his church. And he invested with feeling the one—and only one—stanza that anyone would remember: the lovely story about his parents and the flower, which was a rose.