With Ex-Governor Romney's troubles leading a convention, can he really lead an entire country?

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor
[Tampa, Florida]

Both Chris Christie's speech, and Clint Eastwood's rambling, shambling dialogue with an empty chair make me question Governor Romney's leadership just a little bit.  He seemed a little crest-fallen after Christie's speech, and no wonder. . .Governor Christie only mentioned Mitt Romney a handful of times, while focusing nearly all of his speech on Chris Christie.  And then Clint Eastwood shows up and ignores all the rules, talks nearly three times longer than he was supposed to (delaying Mitt's speech), and decided not to use notes or a script, and then proceeded to make off-color jokes, and say we don't need another lawyer in the White House (Mitt Romney is a lawyer).  The worst part for the Romney campaign is that Mitt probably made the best speech of his life last night, and certainly one of the only ones where he exhibited some (some!) humanity--all to have it disappear under the hundreds of articles and blog posts about Eastwood's speech.  Even Rubio's pretty good speech went largely unnoticed in the aftermath of Dirty Harry.

And not only does Clint Eastwood get blowback on his speech, but it gives the critics even more ammo to lob at Mittens. Lawrence Downes of the New York Times wrote this morning:   "Mitt Romney doesn’t use a chair. But he, too, is having a pretend argument with an invented friend, Imaginary Barack. Imaginary Barack who apologizes for America. Who hates business and old people. Who robs Medicare, closes auto factories, kowtows to the Chinese. Who is the sole reason for the soaring national debt, high unemployment, the housing bust, etc. etc."

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