was the punishment too harsh? i'm howard kurtz, and this is a special convention edition of "reliable sources." the challenge for journal t journalists here in north carolina is how to chronicle a convention that will never match the excitement of the one four years ago when barack obama was a brand new cultural phenomenon. the challenge in tampa was very different -- scrutinizing and analyzing a nominee the country doesn't know that well when other storylines kept overshadowing mitt romney's moment. when romney finally gave his big address, he had the unenviewable task of trying to match the sky-high expectations set by the pundits. >> you know there's something wrong with the kind of job he's done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him. >> this was not a speech that -- that was designed to move an audience, although romney himself was moved. this was a solid speech. a good speech. not a great speech. >> but there was stuff at the end that began to be very dark, very jingle-istic, very scientific and no-nothing. >> romney delivered a well -- competently delivered a well-written speech that was utterly predictable. >> but with tropical storm isaac finally over, romney faced competition from what i thought was a manmade disaster. the strange spectacle of clint eastwood. >> but what do you want me to tell romney? i can't tell him to do that. can't do that to himself. [ laughter ] >> you're absolutely crazy. >> that was the weirdest thing i've seen at a political convention in my entire life. >> i thought that clint eastwood was bizarre, and i thought it was demeaning to the presidency. >> he was confusing, he was rambling, just a big mistake. >> i did think it was a little bit weird. but after dwelling on it and watching the replays a little more, i thought, this was -- this ended up being an unintendedly fantastic performance. >> joining us now here in charlotte to talk about all this, david drucker, reporter for "roll call." christina bellantoy, pbs news hour, and lauren ashburn, editor-in-chief of daily download, a web site where i'm contributor. lauren, you were in tampa, was clint eastwood's performance so, shall we say, unusual, that it warranted this tidal wave of media chatter and analysis? >> duh, right? i immediately tweeted out watching this crazy performance, this as some said, bizarre-o performance, that the rnc is going to regret it. they're going to regret it because you all of the hot air is going to be spent on clint eastwood, as it was. it took away from the romney message. i remember sitting there in the hall thinking, what? what's going on? like -- what? like a chair? you know, and i mean, i -- shocking. >> it was incoherent. >> he was mumbling. i couldn't hear him in the hall. >> we talked about the media coverage. yesterday was the final day after the convention. "washington post," front page story, clint eastwood. not the mitt romney speech. ago, ""politico,"" not making this up, i counted 17 headlines on the home beige about clint eastwood. a bit much? >> yes and no. >> take a stand. >> at the news hour, a youtube feed where we put up all of the videos from the speeches. and the clint eastwood speech last i checked had more than 300,000 views. the romney speech was less than 10,000. so this is something that people are interested in reading about or watching. they are googling it, they are trying to sort of guest a sense of what happened. of course, the media builds that up. that makes people want to go see what everybody's talking about. what's something about this is whether or not it was a mistake for the rnc isn't really for me to determine. but i will say that even if he had given a really effective speech, there are a lot of people in the younger generation that just don't know who clint east ood is. there were several members of our staff who were -- what's that movie again. didn't know the dirty harry line. for a party trying to connect with the younger audience as the democrats tended to be more successful at usually, that may not have been the right menchler. >> at the end i loved when he said, all right, everybody, you know, fill it in. make my day. they did that. >> clint eastwood made the media's day. and i did talk to romney advisers, david drucker, said they didn't know what eastwood was going to do. a topistra strategist said he tt it played on the whole, in america's living room, we don't know. doesn't care how it played in the green room, meaning the fact that most people in the press panned it. >> face it, who cares what we think? we're not the majority of voters. who i found interesting is of course as journalists covering these conventions, what do we always complain about? things are so scripted, everything's so predictable. >> right. >> the minute something -- minute something happens that's not scripted and not predictable, oh, my god, how could they allow this to happen? how could they do something so unscripted and not control the message. here's what i found interesting, while i think they could have done without this, what i think is important is how did it play at home. and for the 50-plus voter in the heartland, out all over the country, i was checking with my family, checking twitter. they loved it. and -- and republicans -- >> true -- >> want to keep the younger vote down. how are they going win this? with the 50-plus voter concerned about medicare, who's concerned about the economy. so again, maybe this was a mistake, but maybe it wasn't. >> after the tweet that i sent out, i got a tweet back from somebody who said, are you so wrong. this played so well in the flyover states. that's exactly the term he used. >> maybe the media is out of touch. i will say this, what you want if you are the nominee of the party is everybody talking about your speech the next day. to the extent that it was clint, clint, clint, make my day, i think it sucked up a lot. let me turn to ann romney, who got almost as much attention as clint eastwood. speech on the first night of the convention. let's play how the reaction was and talk about that the other side. >> she was very witty. obviously attractive. and obviously loves her husband. >> ann romney, on the other hand, looked like a corporate wife. and you know, the story she told about struggles. hard for me to believe. i mean, she's a very rich woman. and i know that in america. >> wow. okay. >> ann romney was electric, strong, and stunning. >> carol costello there. what struck me in talking to journalists, i found a gender split in the way males felt and females -- >> carol costello nailed it. for women, not just journalists, but everybody -- my mother, for example -- aarp saying, wow, i've never heard her speak. fabulous, genuine. remember she got up and went, yea! you know, she was just so real. and really stuck by her husband. he said he will not fail, and i think that the media concurred. >> i thought it was an effective speech and her job was to humanize her husband and all of that. when she said, i love you women, and went on and on about the problems of working women paying the bills, obviously not a problem she had. it struck me over the top pandering. let me get a male voice that might agree with me. >> i disagree with you because the job of a politician is to communicate to and for the voter. no president, no first lady shares every single experience with the voter. barack obama, president of the united states, is a millionaire, as he likes to remind us. yet, he still speaks to and for people that are hurting. so to the extent that ann romney was successful in talking to women about how they feel, which i thought she did well in doing, i think the coverage that she got from us was well deserved. >> and you have to keep in mind, this is somebody that the majority of the american people aren't necessarily tuned in to this election yet. certainly many aren't paying attention to the candidates -- and they're up against the most popular first lady in a very long time. >> let's talk about that as you as a woman and did other women you talked to whether they like the romney ticket or not feel a resonance with ann's snej>> the best line she gave is that it's not a storybook marriage, what i have a real marriage. i think that connected with me as a woman. she talked about some of the fights they have. what was also effective was that biographical video that they played thursday night, before clint eastwood came out. it was either before or after -- >> right before. >> it showed you're in their kitchen. shows the kids. >> great. >> that's exactly what mitt romney's team said they wanted to do last week. and they really did it. they showed every facet of his life. they showed a little behind the curtain of him. that's what they're trying to do for the american people to give them a sense of what he's about. >> but where were they, you know, where were they for the last five months? i mean we've been begging the romney campaign to do something like that. >> where were they for the last five years? >> right. trying to make this image, that was a caring father. >> stories about what he does through church and what he -- all of those human stories about what he did as governor. those are the things you're probably going to be seeing in ads from here on out. didn't do it before -- >> in the last two weeks, there was a front page "new york times" story that talked about how he -- his -- when he was in france, he was pronounced dead. he was in a car accident, i thought, i didn't know this story. >> journalists have had to go dig this out instead of the romney campaign -- >> pushing it out. >> pushing it out. interesting. one more thing i want to get to. that is the way in which tropical storm isaac really overshadowed, some would say rained out the convention. obviously the first night was canceled. by midweek, thursday, it was still the lead story on many morning shows. look at the split screen coverage. >> good evening, as we come on the air, the republican national convention is finally underway. you can see it right there behind me. but it is still storm watch. >> i'm anderson cooper live in new orleans where all eyes are on the sky waiting for the full force of hurricane isaac to hit. >> and i'm wolf blitzer here in tampa. >> christina, big storm deserves important coverage. this wasn't even a hurricane. had it happened the week before, it wouldn't have gotten so much attention because it was intertwined with the storyline of the republican convention. >> sure. and everybody joked, why would you ever hold the convention in florida during hurricane season. and then it -- >> even if the storm was in louisiana, it was still overshadowing in television terms. television loves extreme weather. >> exactly. a television story and we remember four years ago when the republicans were in st. paul. you know, in both cases, this actually benefited them from a convention perspective. in 2008, you ended up canceling george w. bush's night to speak. he delivered a speech via video instead because of the storm that was headed toward the gulf then. and then this time they were able to truncate things into three days that allowed them to trim up some of the speakers. make sure that they got ann romney on tuesday night instead of monday night, which the network said they weren't going cover. in a way, it benefited them. >> can't we just shrink it to maybe two days total? >> i mean, i think mother nature is telling us that three days is plenty. >> too much. >> let's move on to romney's speech. he was the guy who came after clint eastwood going -- i think the media consensus was good speech, solid speech, well delivered. but there have been so much chatter about how he had to connect with voters and talk about himself more personally and grapple with -- and reveal more of himself. he didn't really try to do that. i think that influenced the way the pundits graded the speech. david? >> i think that the problem the romney campaign had was that there was only one campaign telling the romney story. that was the president's campaign. and that's why i think it was so important for -- >> you're leaving out the florida state which keeps describing romney as awkward, stiff, not a real politician -- >> the romney campaign was not telling us all of these things that they finally told us during their convention. and i think that's going to change the coverage of romney going forward. it gives another narrative that's going to go up against the president's narrative. change our stock description of who romney is. >> but did this -- let me go to lauren did. special their speech change our -- did this speech change our perception of who romney is? he got a b-plus from the media, but wasn't seen as hitting it out of the park. he didn't talk -- no oprah-esque moments. >> the word i kept seeing in coverage was workman-like. it was solid, he did what he had to do. he looked presidential -- >> was that a fair assessment? did we set the bar too high? he had to somehow break through the screen. most politicians can't do that. >> it's not for the press to -- to describe what this guy has to do really. right? he's got to give a message -- >> do you know how much airtime has been devoted, you're saying we shouldn't do that. >> it's not our role. and the man was able to portray over the course of the week being very humble. not liking to talk about his charitable giving. you know, being cheap. none of those things are accidents. and there are bits and pieces that he let other people tell his story. >> i think it's important to stop reporting on a speech in terms of what we think but try to interpret what the voters in the states are going to feel about it. and in that regard, that's why i thought he did well. >> good ad vie. lots of luck with being found. i've got to go to see break. coming up, the political press of accused of swooning over barack obama in 2008. will the tone in the convention change as this democratic convention gets underway? 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[ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. i'm very grateful to be alive. aspirin really made a difference. i'm very grateful to be alive. mom: ready t♪ go to work? ♪ ♪ ♪ every mom needs a little helper. that's why i got a subaru. announcer: love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. ♪ (train horn) vo: wherever our trains go, the economy comes to life. norfolk southern. one line, infinite possibilities. convention gets underway here in charlotte, north carolina, i can't help but think back to four years ago the tone of the coverage of candidate obama. all of which seemed to be encapsulated in one moment on cable television. >> it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear barack obama's speech -- i felt this thing up my leg. i don't have that too often. >> steady. >> a dramatic event. he speaks about america in a way that has nothing to do with politics. has to do with the feel being our country. and that is an objective assessment. >> david drucker, four years later, for the media covering president obama. is the thrill gone? >> i think the thrill's gone too a degree. but i think he still gets the benefit of the doubt at times with coverage, as i've watched, for instance, the monthly reporting of the jobs numbers. we've seen sometimes about 100,000 little, under 100,000, maybe 150,000, and where i think for presidents past, both democrat and republican, the focus would be on the fact that there are still so many people hurting. the focus at times has been but hey, we're still making progress, and we -- we met analysts' expectations as though that's the point of this. >> christina ballatoni, are the media more aggressive in covering not just the obama presidency after 3 1/2 years, but his re-election campaign compared to 2008? >> probably. you know, i certainly think that i have been the same in my coverage. but it is something that particularly because you've got a lot of people on the right sighing that peop in-- saying t went easy on president obama, they respond to that. the way they set up conventions is no accident. they have giant media parties. by the way, both parties do that. people aren't always necessarily aware when they're watching at home that the press is treated pretty well. they're taken care of. they're given this party with the alcohol and food. and the republicans invited delegates, too. they limited the number of media who could attend. the democrats had a party where everyone was invited. they've got cell phone charging stations out there. everyone's looking for friendly coverage. it's important for journalists to give fair coverage, no matter what party you're at, no matter what parties you've been to. >> it is important, but you asked about the thrill up the leg. chris matthews is -- in the tank right now for president obama. and so is the majority of more than. >> he's a liberal commentator. >> of course. >> most of the people anchoring the msnbc coverage are liberal commentators. they don't hide that. >> but it wasn't like this four years ago. you can just see the transition msnbc has made between four years ago and now. >> okay. msnbc clearly has moved sharply to the left. i don't think anybody there would deny that. but when you look at the mainstream -- i don't mean information -- when you look at the straight reporters, the newspaper writers, not the columnists. when you look at the tv reporter, not the commentators, i had a number of conservatives in tampa saying they think the press as a whole, not just the opinion monitors, in the tank for obama. >> no, i think that there are shining examples of people who aren't judy woodruff, you can go bret baier, you can go down the line, howard kurtz, who are not in the tank for obama. and make it a big, big point not to be, as christina says, as they should. >> but there is that perception. >> and for every person that goes on the air, they might say something, they're going to get an e-mail saying you're in the tank for romney, or you're in the tank for the president. it's about how people perceive it. if the media radio -- the media environment is so polarized with the rest of the country that people want to hear what they're going to hear. which is one of the reasons that networks with a side have the challenge. >> i think it's an