As an historian of the American West, I confess that I stand in awe of Clint Eastwood’s body of work. He has crafted some of the most indelible images associated with that unending font of significance that Americans call “the frontier.”

Eastwood crossed a frontier again in Tampa at the Republican National Convention two weeks ago. In fact, he crossed the line.

It has been suggested that Eastwood’s appearance was designed to provide a kind of comic relief, that it should not be taken too seriously as part of the Republican convention program. While the Romney campaign tried to protect itself from any blowback by insisting that Eastwood was “ad libbing” and that it “was a break from the political speech-making,” it also pointed out that “the crowd enjoyed it.”

Many commentators have labeled it “rambling,” but it’s hard not to believe that the entire performance was at some level carefully crafted by the Oscar-winning director. The rambling functioned as a bit of cover — like a shot to get the guards to look the other way and allow Eastwood to get away with what he was doing.

The Western hero has been preeminently a man of action, not words. In Westerns, he stands as the opposite of the garrulous and guileful politician, the untrustworthy man of words. Over the last five years, this mirrors one of the main Republican assaults on Obama: He is a man who says pretty things but has no follow-through and no substance. By contrast, the Western hero doesn’t say much, but when he is pushed against the wall — when some violence is enacted against him or his family — he strikes back. In “Hang ’Em High,” Eastwood plays a man who survives a lynching, and then exacts vengeance one by one on the people who tried to kill him.

At the convention, Eastwood played the victim again. With an approving audience of thousands looking on, Eastwood now had President Obama just where he wanted him — seemingly seated, or tied up, in a chair below him, supposedly demanding that Eastwood tell Romney to do something profane to himself, and then telling Eastwood to shut up. Obama was a hollow, hollering man, and Eastwood was a man back in control ready to quietly exact revenge for the slings and arrows suffered when Obama took power. For those Americans who feel aggrieved by the fact that Barack Obama occupies the White House, Eastwood’s seizing of the bully pulpit was a cathartic master stroke. To illustrate his advice that the American people should fire Obama, Eastwood dragged his finger across his throat.

There was more than a hint of violence. Eastwood first took the stage under a monumental projection of the actor as the outlaw Josey Wales, six-shooters in both hands. The performance ended with what should have been a bone-chilling call-and-response: Eastwood saying, “Go ahead,” and the audience roaring back, “Make my day.” Suddenly, the invisible, mute yet foul-mouthed and uppity president was cast in the criminal role of the punk from “Dirty Harry.”

Presumably, one more peep out of this president and Americans would be forced to exercise so-called Second Amendment solutions.

— Douglas Sackman, a Vashon resident, is a history professor at the University of Puget Sound.