The risk of going off script

For all but 12 minutes, last week's Republican National Convention was everything party leaders now demand of these quadrennial affairs: carefully choreographed, with each prime-time speaker adhering to the schedule and the message of the night.

But that 12-minute gap in discipline was one doozy of a distraction.

For party strategists, it was bad enough that 82-year-old Clint Eastwood was on stage twice as long as scheduled, strayed off message by taking President Obama to task for positions not necessarily disputed by Mitt Romney (Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay) and employed a cheap tactic - projecting profanity and ill temperament on an imaginary Obama. Then again, unfairness was not off-limits from the script of this convention, as illustrated by the half-truths laced into the speech of vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan.

What really had to frustrate convention choreographers was that Eastwood's baffling performance, not Romney's acceptance speech, became the most scrutinized segment of the most important of the three nights.

Fear of a "Clint Eastwood moment" is certain to drain any remaining tolerance for spontaneity from the parties in planning future convention. It has become a matter of faith for party leaders that the elements that make good television - nomination drama, platform fights, emergence of firebrands who seize the spotlight - do not help the nominee's chances in November. The parties have accepted the reality that a drama-free convention will yield them just one hour a night on network prime time.

The Republicans in Tampa, Fla., force-fed viewers with nightly themes, as will the Democrats this week in Charlotte, N.C. In case you missed the GOP's intended takeaways: Obama never delivered on his promises and has run out of ideas. His "you didn't build it" remark revealed an obliviousness to what made America great. Romney really is a caring human being, and even has a sense of humor away from the public eye. Business success is something to celebrate.

Conventions are no longer times for parties to define their souls, but are forums for the nominees to begin their general-election marketing campaigns. And, of course, they are opportunities for politicians to spend quality time with their big donors, and raise lots of money.

The fact that 15,000 credentialed journalists are still attracted to events with few if any unexpected developments - also known as "news" - may seem surprising in this era of shrunken newsroom budgets. But there is value in knowing how a future president is going to market himself, and how and where he is raising his cash, even if intra-party crankiness or dissent is kept out of camera view in the convention hall.

American taxpayers are subsidizing these galas with a direct contribution of $18 million to each party and another $100 million for security costs at the two conventions. That is a lot of public money for soft-focus infomercials interrupted only by the improvisation of a world-class actor-director who clearly stumbled onto the wrong stage.

The politicians who rail against government subsidies for artistic experimentation and civic-affairs programming should start by cutting off federal funding for their conventions.

Convention tension

The two parties have learned their lesson: Convention drama may be good for ratings, but it's lethal in November. Hence today's over-scripted gatherings.

Chicago 1968

Democrats

The drama: Vitriol reigned inside the hall, with bitter divisions over whether the party platform should call for an end to the Vietnam War. The "peace plank" lost in a close vote. Outside on the streets, Chicago police clashed violently with thousands of protesters in what some later called "a police riot."

Searing image: Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut , speaking from the podium, decried the "Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago" in an in-your-face denunciation of host Mayor Richard Daley.

Election outcome: Nominee Hubert Humphrey lost to Republican Richard Nixon.

Miami Beach 1972

Democrats

The drama: The three-day convention was one of the party's most chaotic and contentious of the century. Protracted fights over delegate rules, party platform and the vice presidential nomination thoroughly upended the schedule, and had the sessions running well past midnight.

Searing image: Nominee George McGovern ended up delivering his acceptance speech at 3 a.m. Eastern time, long after most Americans had gone to bed.

Election outcome: McGovern lost in a landslide to President Nixon.

Kansas City 1976

Republicans

The drama: This was the last major-party convention that began with the nomination unsettled. President Gerald Ford managed to narrowly defeat challenger Ronald Reagan, but not before the delegates passed several platform planks that rebuked his administration's policies.

Searing image: Even in defeat, Reagan was the star, thrilling delegates with an impromptu speech that clearly upstaged Ford's pedestrian acceptance address.

Election outcome: Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.

New York 1980

Democrats

The drama: Carter went into the convention with the nomination seemingly sewed up, but challenger Ted Kennedy made a last-ditch effort to free all delegates to break their commitments on the first ballot. Carter prevailed on the "open rule" vote, but it was Kennedy who electrified the hall with his "Dream Will Never Die" speech.

Searing image: After the nomination, Kennedy gave Carter a perfunctory handshake and then went out of his way to avoid him in a devastatingly awkward dance on the podium.

Romney starts fall campaign visiting storm victims

JEAN LAFITTE, La. (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney launched the final leg of his quest for the White House by visiting storm-battered Louisiana on Friday. He drove through a town that was flooded by Hurricane Isaac in part because it's still outside the vast flooding protection system built with federal funds after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Just hours after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Romney swooped into this fishing community, where Isaac brought severe flooding to the area earlier in the week before being downgraded to a tropical storm.

Romney, who chatted with a handful of storm victims and shook hands with first responders, didn't have too much to say. "I'm here to learn and obviously to draw some attention to what's going on here," Romney told Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who he accompanied to the Jean Lafitte town hall to meet with emergency workers. "So that people around the country know that people down here need help."

That snippet of conversation represented the bulk of Romney's public remarks in Louisiana on Friday.

His host, Jindal, is now calling on the federal government to expand the rebuilt flood protection system that prevented serious flooding in New Orleans during this week's storm. That system, built after flooding from Katrina devastated much of New Orleans, cost the Army Corps of Engineers $14.5 billion. It doesn't extend as far as Jean Lafitte, which is situated in Jefferson Parish, and has been affected by a series of hurricanes, including Katrina, Rita, Cindy and now Isaac.

"It is absolutely critical that the Corps, and certainly our delegation working them, but that the Corps and the federal government look at those other levees," Jindal said Thursday. Lafitte is included in a proposed ring levee that the state hopes to build, but there are no concrete plans to build yet.

Romney was silent on whether, as president, he would support paying for such an expansion. Romney's running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, has proposed eliminating $10 billion a year in disaster spending and requiring Congress to pay for emergencies by cutting from elsewhere in the budget. That proposal was blocked by GOP leaders.

Hurricane Isaac is blamed for at least six deaths in Louisiana and Mississippi. It submerged hundreds of homes, forced thousands of others to evacuate and cut power to nearly half of Louisiana's homes and businesses.

Romney didn't speak to reporters as he toured Jean Lafitte on Friday. The Romney campaign refused to say whether he would support additional funding for the levees, saying only that the GOP nominee "recognizes the importance of disaster prevention and would seek to ensure that we have the infrastructure we need to keep all Americans safe."

Jindal did explain the issue to Romney as they climbed into the Republican nominee's SUV and began their tour.

"It (the levee system) performs well, but the areas here — the other areas ..." Jindal said, trailing off because Romney jumped in.

"Are outside, outside that levee system," Romney said.

Romney's motorcade, including trucks equipped to drive through high water, edged gingerly down Jean Lafitte Boulevard, a main road.

Accompanied by National Guard vehicles, the caravan inched through water that at some points was a foot or more deep, submerging gas stations, flooding homes and covering front laws. Residents stood in the water and watched the motorcade pass.

Flood protection was clearly on the minds of residents. A man who waved a neon yellow sign reading "Mitt is Our Man" wondered why levees had not been able to protect the low-lying areas of this fishing community.

"It has really destroyed us," the man said to Romney after the motorcade stopped on the side of the road. "I don't know why we can't come up with something that saves all."

Up the street, a giant pink sign hung on the balcony of a flooded house. "Where is our levee protection?" it read.

Romney and Jindal spent close to an hour meeting with first responders and local officials. Romney shook hands with National Guardsmen outside the U.S. Post Office and talked with a local resident, Jodie Chiarello, 42, who lost her home in Isaac's flooding.

"He just told me to, um, there's assistance out there," Chiarello said of her conversation with Romney. "He said, go home and call 211." That's a public service number offered in many states.

Chiarello said she will likely seek some other shelter because her home was submerged in the flooding. She expressed frustration about the town's lack of flood protection.

"We live outside the levee protection that's why we get all this water because they close the floodgates up front and all they're doing is flooding us out down here," she said. "It's very frustrating, very. We go through Katrina and Rita and now we're going through Cindy, Lee and now Isaac."

Romney's last-minute visit, announced less than 12 hours after he became the Republican nominee, took him to the disaster area ahead of his Democratic rival, President Barack Obama. The president was following with his own visit to Louisiana on Monday, the White House announced.

Romney went at Jindal's invitation, his campaign said. Jindal, a Republican, told reporters Romney had been in touch several days ago to ask how he could help with storm relief and Jindal suggested Romney come down and see the damage for himself. He said he had extended an invitation to Obama as well.

"We welcome them both," Jindal said.

Jindal insisted that he would stay focused on the storm's aftermath during both men's visits.

"We're not talking politics," he said. "That's not the right time to do that. We're solely focused on the hurricane and the response."

White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked what a private citizen like Romney could accomplish by visiting a disaster area, said he wasn't sure how to answer the question but that drawing attention to the affected area was "important."

Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said Romney's visit could focus people on "the needs of the affected region, particularly the need for charitable donations and resources to aid relief efforts."

Back in Washington, Democrats seized on the trip to accuse Republicans of supporting cuts in federal disaster funding that the Gulf Coast will now need to recover from Isaac.

"It is the height of hypocrisy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to make a pretense of showing sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Isaac when their policies would leave those affected by this disaster stranded and on their own," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a written statement.

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu said she welcomed Romney to her home state but pushed him on disaster funding.

"I hope as he witnesses recovery in action, he will reflect upon his party's approach to funding disaster response," she said. "Had the plan advocated by his running mate Congressman Paul Ryan and Congressman Eric Cantor prevailed, there would be no money readily available to provide assistance for this, or any other disaster."

The President's Executive Order On Military Health Care Is Too Little Too Late

It's certainly planned, inadvertently ironic, that President Barack Obama chose the 2nd anniversary of the end of the Iraq War to visit Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to announce an executive order expanding suicide prevention and substance abuse services for veterans.

Jay Carney, White House press secretary, said to reporters aboard Air Force One that the executive order focuses on the "unseen wounds of war."

The Washington Post's Amy Gardner reports that Carney said the focus on "unseen wounds" includes mental-health conditions, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post Traumatic Stress (PTS), and is the latest evidence Obama is fulfilling that promise.

“We can’t forget,” Carney told reporters, including Gardner. “This country has been engaged in military conflict now for more than 10 years abroad since our first forces went into Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001. A tremendous number of men and women have served in those two countries.”

Needless to say, this appears to be a Band-Aid on, and distraction from the failed war in Afghanistan. Obama's foreign policy has done nothing but make combat operations a bit more messy in the restive country — a move emphasized by the fact that American KIA's in Afghanistan essentially doubled, from 1000 to 2000, over the last 27 months of Obama's presidency.

If the war is what causes the wounds, ending it might be the best form of "prevention." Instead, Obama plans to expand personnel in the Veterans Association, an already convoluted, bureaucratic mess, that can't seem to get out of it's own way.

The same VA that messed up GI-Bill payments in Ohio, prompting military leaders to "encourage" colleges to matriculate veteran students who have insufficient funds, and the same VA which spent millions on a conference, including $52,000 on a video, while veterans toil and navigate through complex phone corridors in an attempt to receive their benefits.

That's the VA which is essential to Obama's new "initiative" to stem the incredible rise of suicides in the military. Suicides due largely to combat stress, brought about by multiple deployments.

By the end of last year, there were 125,000 vets in the Army alone who had deployed three or more times, and to make matters worse, in wars increasingly viewed as illegitimate and pointless.

Under these conditions, even one deployment can be enough.

This executive order is largely just a band aid, Mr. President, the damage has already been done.

Huntley: Look for Obama to give a great speech — but not much else

Here’s one prediction for this week’s Democratic National Convention that is 99 percent certain: President Barack Obama will give a better sounding acceptance speech than Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney did the other day.

Oratory is what Obama does.

It’s too bad he can’t run the country as well as he can deliver a highfalutin’ speech.

Yet, it is amazing that a continual theme of Obama, his supporters and his apologists in the mainstream media is that the president’s problem isn’t his policies but his failure to communicate and explain them to the American people.

Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee, absolutely nailed it when he told the Republican National Convention, “Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What’s missing is leadership in the White House.”

Obama’s oratory is characterized by a puffed-up grandiosity, and Romney nailed that in his acceptance speech: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

Obama’s left-wing media acolytes immediately pounced that Romney was dissing climate change. Nonsense. With 23 million Americans unemployed or under-employed, Romney merely recognized that the here-and-now problems making life miserable for millions of Americans had been neglected by a president who prefers blue-sky rhetoric on climate change to facing the facts about what’s need to revive the economy.

It may not have been as pretty as Obama’s orations, but Romney’s speech, a mix of the personal and policy, was good enough to persuade persuadable voters that he’s qualified to sit in the Oval Office.

Then Romney did something to act presidential. The day after the Tampa convention he flew to Louisiana to assess the storm damage from Hurricane Isaac. Romney said he was there to draw attention to the plight of the victims and relate to the country that they need help.

Guess what? Obama had to play catch-up. Just hours after the White House got word of Romney’s visit to storm victims, it announced Obama was canceling a campaign appearance in Ohio Monday to fly to Louisiana. It sure looks like a presidential responsibility got lost in all the campaigning and fund-raising Obama has been doing of late.

After that embarrassing lapse, Obama will be happy to bask in the spotlight at his party’s convention in Charlotte. The focus will be his speech Thursday night. And there’s little doubt that it will sound better than Romney’s. But Obama will have to explain why four more years of the policies that have failed for the past four years will somehow restore prosperity.

So, yes, Obama will give a soaring speech, filled with beautiful words, mellifluous phrases and glowing sentences sure to send a thrill up the leg of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and other Obama cheerleaders in the left-wing media.

But, will millions of Americans weary of four years of soul-draining economic misery be satisfied with more words from Obama? They just might deliver a verdict on yet another Obama speech that would be, in the words of the famous Bud Lite commercial:

“Great taste, less filling.”

Weakening Isaac hovers over water-logged La.

(CBS/AP) NEW ORLEANS - Isaac hovered over Louisiana for a third day Thursday, shedding more than a foot of additional rain that forced authorities to hurriedly evacuate areas ahead of the storm and rescue hundreds of people who could not escape as the rapidly rising waters swallowed entire neighborhoods.

The huge spiral weather system weakened to a tropical depression as it crawled inland, but it caught many places off guard by following a meandering, unpredictable path. The storm's excruciatingly slow movement meant that Isaac practically parked over low-lying towns and threw off great sheets of water for hours.

As of 4 p.m. CDT, Isaac was moving at north-northwest 12 mph with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, according to NOAA.

"I was blindsided. Nobody expected this," said Richard Musatchia, who fled his water-filled home in LaPlace, northwest of New Orleans.

Inside the fortified levees that protected New Orleans, bursts of sunshine streamed through the thick clouds, and life began to return to normal. But beyond the city, people got their first good look at Isaac's damage: Hundreds of homes were underwater. Half the state was without power at the one point. Thousands were staying at shelters.

There have been reported fatalities in Plaquemines Parish. CBS News reported Thursday that a chief investigator from the parish coroner's office confirmed that two bodies -- a man and woman believed to be in their 40s -- were found in a home in Braithwaite, Louisiana.

And the damage may not be done. Even more rain was expected in Louisiana before the storm finally drifts into Arkansas and Missouri.

Isaac dumped as much as 16 inches in some areas, and about 500 people had to be rescued by boat or high-water vehicles. At least two deaths were reported.

Five feet of water poured into Musatchia's home before a neighbor passed by with a boat and evacuated him and his 6-year-old boxer, Renny.

He piled two suitcases, a backpack and a few smaller bags onto the boat and said that was all he had left. He abandoned a brand-new Cadillac and a Harley-Davidson.

"People have their generators, because they thought the power would go out, but no one expected" so much water, Musatchia said.

Other evacuees were picked up by National Guard vehicles, school buses and pickup trucks.

Daphine and David Newman fled their newly decorated home with two trash bags of clothing. They have lived in their subdivision since 1992 and never had water in their home from previous storms, not even Hurricane Katrina.

The comparison was common since Isaac hit on the seventh anniversary of the devastating 2005 storm, though the differences were stark.

Katrina was more powerful, coming ashore as a Category 3 storm. Isaac was a Category 1 at its peak. Katrina barreled into the state and quickly moved through. Isaac creeped across the landscape at less than 10 mph and wobbled constantly.

David Newman was frustrated that the government spent billions of dollars reinforcing New Orleans levees after Katrina, only to see the water inundating surrounding regions.

"The water's got to go somewhere," he said. "It's going to find the weakest link."

The sudden call for evacuations so long after the storm made landfall provoked a debate about whether anyone was to blame.

Jefferson Parish Council President Chris Roberts said forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami needed a new way of measuring the danger that goes beyond wind speed.

"The risk that a public official has is, people say, `Aw, it's a Category 1 storm, and you guys are out there calling for mandatory evacuations,"' Roberts said.

Hundreds of people in lower Jefferson chose to ride out the storm -- and many of them had to be rescued, he said.

Eric Blake, a specialist at the hurricane center, said that although Isaac's cone shifted west as it zigzagged toward the Gulf Coast, forecasters accurately predicted its path, intensity and rainfall. He did say the storm came ashore somewhat slower than anticipated.

Blake cautioned against using Katrina as a benchmark for flooding during other storms.

"Every hurricane is different," Blake said. "If you're trying to use the last hurricane to gauge your storm surge risk, it's very dangerous."

Along the shores of Lake Ponchartrain near New Orleans, officials sent scores of buses and dozens of high-water vehicles to help evacuate about 3,000 people as floodwaters lapped against houses and stranded cars.

The water rose waist-high in some neighborhoods, and the Louisiana National Guard worked with sheriff's deputies to rescue people stuck in their homes.

In LaPlace, a Coast Guard helicopter plucked a couple and their dogs from a home after storm surge gushed into their neighborhood and washed many houses away.

"They used a flashlight inside the house as a signaling device, which made all the difference in locating them effectively," Lt. Cmdr. Jorge Porto said.

Crews intentionally breached a levee that was strained by Isaac's floodwaters in southeast Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, which is outside the federal levee system. At the same time, water at a dam farther north in Mississippi was released in an effort to prevent flooding there.

Since the storm arrived in the U.S., the first two fatalities were a tow truck driver hit by a tree that fell on his vehicle in Picayune, Miss., and a man who fell from a tree while helping friends move a vehicle. Deputies did not know why he climbed the tree.

Although New Orleans' bigger, stronger levee system easily handled the deluge from Isaac, rural areas beyond the city's fortifications had few defenses.

Isaac "has reinforced for us once again just how vulnerable these critical areas are," said Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu. "We must re-engage the Corps of Engineers on this."

More than 900,000 homes and businesses around the state -- about 47 percent of all customers -- were without power Thursday. Utility company Entergy said that included about 157,000 in New Orleans.

New Orleans' biggest problems seemed to be downed power lines, scattered tree limbs and minor flooding.

In Mississippi, several coastal communities struggled with all the extra water, including Pascagoula, where a large portion of the city flooded and water blocked downtown intersections.

High water also prevented more than 800 people from returning to their homes in Bay St. Louis, a small town that lost most of its business district to Katrina's storm surge.

Even though Isaac was weaker, Mayor Les Fillingame said, "every storm is somebody's Katrina, regardless of the intensity."