The political class doesn’t seem to appreciate Eastwood’s bit, but I have a feeling it might have resonated far more than anything else the convention might have offered. Eastwood does have an iconic status in the culture, and he undoubtedly broke through to the heartland, using unforgiving Alinsky tactics on the Kenyan. Political operatives sometimes live too much in their tunnel-vision world of calculated speeches and focus groups and polls, and just are sometimes oblivious to cutting through the fog.
Indeed, laughter reduces Obama more than any specific criticism could.