Last Friday, everyone who saw the Republican National Convention’s final night was talking about one thing: Clint Eastwood’s speech in which he railed against a vision of Barack Obama sitting in an empty chair.

Eastwood used his time on stage, which was apparently quite a bit longer than he was scheduled for and without a teleprompter or any prepared remarks, to ask questions of an invisible Obama sitting in an empty chair. The questions largely asked about the different failed promises that he’d made, including ending Guantanamo Bay, to fixing the economy, to ending the wars and several others.

The speech had a humorous tone to it, and clues to Obama’s responses were given through Eastwood’s reaction to them, such as “What do you mean ‘Shut up?'” While no profanity was actually used by Eastwood, it was heavily implied through his reactions, for example when he said “I can’t do that to myself.” The crowd loved this, and the humor was a much needed break from three days of political speeches.

While the crowd liked it, the initial reaction from pundits in the press was largely negative. The speech was seen as rambling, out of place and at times incoherent. Some in the press called it racist, which is apparently a gut reaction after a Republican criticizes the president, but most were simply wondering what on earth they were watching.

They were watching a pop culture icon perform an improvised soliloquy on stage. This was not a political speech, it was a performance piece. If they were expecting him to give a rallying cry to the Conservative base to vote for Romney, of course they were going to be surprised.

The biggest issue the press had with the speech was that it distracted from the main event of the night: Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech. Perhaps it did, but that is the fault of the media’s own bias against substance, not Eastwood’s speech in itself.

What the media missed was the genius of the speech, that it used an empty chair as a metaphor for the Obama presidency, that he has failed to lead on the issues he’d promise to lead on. This metaphor really caught on, so much so that people on Twitter declared Monday “National Empty Chair Day,” which was the number one trending topic for most of Labor Day. This ought to show how Obama has failed to lead on the economy.

This alone should show that the speech was quite successful. He created a true internet “meme” through his performance, which has since permeated even the deepest depths of the internet. If he had just made a normal speech, none of this would have happened. It would have been forgotten.

The final advantage to the Eastwood performance was that it drew in a lot of people to see the amazing speeches following it, Marco Rubio and Romney. These people were likely not of the type that would typically tune in to watch three days of political speeches, so getting any of them to turn on the convention for the most important part is certainly an advantage.

The chattering class and GOP elites may not have cared for it, but they were never the target audience for Clint Eastwood. The people who Eastwood wanted to hear the performance did hear it, and they loved every second of it.

Keene is a junior majoring in political science, economic, and public policy.