Clint Eastwood put on an odd skit Thursday night at the Republican National Convention. It was awkward to watch and hard to hear, but I have to hand it to Eastwood. He achieved the impossible — he made the gaffe-prone Mitt Romney come across as supremely tactful.

Four years ago, when Barack Obama was elected president, Eastwood told the Republican National Convention Thursday night, he thought, “This is great. Everybody was crying. Oprah was crying. I was even crying.”