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A line of people that stretched for five city blocks awaited Mr. Romney as his motorcade pulled into Union Terminal here.

And inside there were so many people that the campaign had to redirect a few hundred of them into a small overflow room, where they crammed in shoulder to shoulder.

Later, thousands in Jacksonville, Fla., filled a courtyard and gave Mr. Romney and his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, a spirited reception.

Mr. Romney has often failed to spark much of a connection with his audiences, and along the campaign trail enthusiasm has sometimes been in short supply.

But inside a soaring Art Deco-style rotunda here, the candidate, joined by John A. Boehner, the speaker of the House, and Senator Rob Portman, delivered a vigorous and sharply focused speech — complete with fresh punch lines — that sent the audience into earsplitting roars.

Echoing a criticism of the president that he has been making more powerfully lately, Mr. Romney denounced Mr. Obama’s first term as one of betrayed promises and failed leadership.

“One of the promises he made was he was going to create more jobs. And today, 23 million people are out of work or stopped looking for work or underemployed,” Mr. Romney said. “Let me tell you, if you have a coach that’s zero and 23 million, you say it’s time to get a new coach. It’s time for America to see a winning season again, and we’re going to bring it to them.”

Mr. Romney also confronted head-on a subject that he had been more reluctant to wade into: chastising Republicans for running up the deficit when they controlled Washington.

The more popular and convenient story line for many Republicans has often been to lay the blame for record deficits at the feet of the Obama administration.

“We’re going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time, and for a while we didn’t do it,” he said. “When we had the lead we let people down.”

As Mr. Romney roused the crowd here, Mr. Obama sought to drum up momentum for his convention, which begins Tuesday. He started a four-day, four-state campaign trip on Saturday in Iowa, the state where he opened his quest for the presidency five years ago. In front of a crowd of 10,000 outside Des Moines, he said the Republican convention was a reminder of how backward-looking their vision for the country is.

“You might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV,” said Mr. Obama, to the applause and amusement of his audience. He offered a summary, “Everything’s bad, it’s Obama’s fault and Governor Romney is going to be the one who knows the secret to creating jobs and growing the economy.”

“There was a lot of talk about hard truths and bold choices, but nobody ever actually bothered to tell you what they were,” Mr. Obama added. “And when Governor Romney had his chance to let you in on his secrets, he did not offer a single new idea — just retreads of the same old policies that have been sticking it to the middle class for years.”

It was Mr. Obama’s seventh visit to the state this year and his 13th as president, reflecting the importance of this swing state’s six electoral votes to his prospects of winning the necessary 270 votes in a close, unpredictable election.

On Monday, Mr. Obama will take a detour from campaigning to tour the storm damage in Louisiana, a solid Republican state, and then visit Virginia, a swing state, on Tuesday before arriving for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday.

Mr. Ryan also had a separate campaign stop of his own, visiting Ohio State University in the morning for the football team’s season opener. He joined tailgaters and flipped some burgers on a grill, a skill that his mother, Betty, noted he had acquired working at McDonald’s as a young man.

Since Mr. Romney picked Mr. Ryan as his running mate last month, the former Massachusetts governor has used his younger and spryer No. 2 to add some energy to campaign rallies. But the speech in Cincinnati nevertheless lit a fire in the audience while Mr. Ryan was in another part of the state.

The setting for Mr. Romney’s speech had been the backdrop for another major political event. On Oct. 7, 2002, George W. Bush delivered a televised address from Union Terminal to make his case for the Iraq war.

Mr. Romney’s speech hit some of the same notes that Mr. Romney made in Tampa, Fla., where he accepted his party’s nomination on Thursday night. He accused the president of putting teachers’ unions, not students, first. He said the president would raise taxes on successful small business owners. And he pledged to repeal the president’s health care overhaul, which he called a “big cloud” raining over small businesses.

“America’s going to come roaring back,” Mr. Romney said as he concluded. “We’re going to get America strong again, for you, for your children, for the future.”

The language in the speech, complete with sports team metaphors and the “roaring back” line recalled the message delivered by a Romney campaign supporter in a Super Bowl car commercial that stirred considerable controversy when it aired: That supporter was Clint Eastwood.

Jeremy W. Peters reported from Cincinnati, and Jackie Calmes from Urbandale, Iowa. Trip Gabriel contributed reporting from Columbus, Ohio.

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On the final day of the Republican National Convention, thousands of reporters, aides, delegates, members of Congress and donors could have been mistaken for the walking dead.

With droopy eyelids, attendees grasped bottomless cups of coffee and counted down the minutes until it would all be over — even though the main event, Mitt Romney’s speech, was just hours away.

Continue Reading “It’s a lot of coffee and to some degree it’s just putting one foot in front of the other,” said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas). “It’s been a good convention but I’m delighted it’ll all be over and I’ll be happy to head back to Texas before daybreak tomorrow.”

One Republican Senate aide said he’d averaged around 2½ hours of sleep every night, between the speeches, the nonstop parties after the speeches, and the very early delegation breakfasts.

“Everyone is just kind of in a daze,” the aide said, noting he’d caught himself dozing off during more than one meeting. “I have not been this exhausted in a long time and I’m pretty sure I’m just going to sleep for the next four days.”

A television journalist said she had gone through “about eight pounds of make up” trying to cover up any hint of exhaustion-induced-under-eye circles.

It’s not that the convention hasn’t been a good time, attendees said, but the schedule and late nights quickly become overwhelming even for the most seasoned convention goers.

“My wife and I have a little secret to make the convention a success: you leave before everybody else does so you can get a little bit more sleep,” said 70-year-old Sen. Jon Kyl. “Some of our younger staff I can’t account for, but I’ve been to conventions before and know how it gets.”

Kyl, who is retiring this year, said he thinks the conventions go on a little too long, forcing people to stretch their limits.

“I’d favor shortening it by a few days,” he said.

Republican donor Foster Friess was one of the few attendees on Thursday who looked well rested. Although he’d been out until 2 a.m. the night before, he said he’s been getting his normal six hours of sleep and just “sleeping in a little later.”

“The best tip I can give to avoid the craziness would be to stay home and watch it on TV,” he said. “It’s so frenetic because there are so many competing things to go and you have to prioritize one over the other to get to the various venues and scramble around.”

“For someone from Wyoming like myself, my life is a little slower than this,” he added. “Three days ago I was on my horse out in the wilderness.”

Freshman Rep. Sean Duffy was running off of pure adrenaline, beyond excited to be a part of the Wisconsin crew there to see Rep. Paul Ryan accept the vice presidential nomination.

“It’s going to be wearing, you are going to get a few bags under your eyes on the last day, but it’s been incredible,” Duffy said. “I was on the floor with the Wisconsin delegation last night and it was incredible. Wisconsin is usually in the back corner where you can barely see the stage. And now we’re up in front with our VP from Wisconsin, Reince Priebus is the chairman of the convention, and Scott Walker is here. To be there last night was emotional.”

Rep. Allen West was equally energized, but he attributed part of that to staying away from alcohol (he doesn’t drink) and exercising every morning.

“I ran 6 miles this morning and swam a few laps in the pool where we are so I’m always ready and charged,” he said. “You can just feel the energy here, and anyway, you can sleep over the weekend.”

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The Romneys and the Ryans have arrived in Tampa, starting the hard work of shifting a city’s focus from storm coverage to the job at hand -- anointing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as the Republican standard-bearers. 

And, weather-permitting, throwing one heck of a party. 

Romney's wife Ann, upon landing, immediately went to the convention site, the Tampa Bay Times Forum, for a walk-through ahead of her major speech Tuesday night. She did a quick sound-check, reading the opening of the Gettysburg Address from a teleprompter placed at the back of the room. 

On the flight to Tampa, she described her speech as "heartfelt." 

The former first lady of Massachusetts is one of several big speakers on deck whose task is to rally the party around Mitt Romney, who is expected to be formally nominated on the floor late Tuesday afternoon. 

With Mrs. Romney poised to tell the American public a bit about her husband's personal side -- and perhaps rebut the Democratic narrative that his candidacy is a threat to women -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is in town preparing for his keynote. 

Speaking to the Michigan delegation Tuesday morning, Christie joked that his staff had done "a fabulous job of lowering expectations." 

Far from it, the anticipation has been building around his speech, with the party relying on Christie to light a fire under delegates and viewers -- and send everyone home eager to hear the rest of the Republican 2012 story from Ryan tomorrow and Romney himself on closing night. 

The entire affair has competition, though, not just from now-Hurricane Isaac, but President Obama. 

The president was beginning a three-state counter-programming tour Tuesday with two visits later in the day in Ames, Iowa, and Fort Collins, Colo. 

Though planned visits by Vice President Biden to Florida this week were canceled due to the storm, Obama is charging ahead with rallies aimed at depriving the Republicans of coverage all to themselves. 

Polls show Romney and Obama running about even, but each man holds significant leads with voters in important subtexts that could sway the roughly 10 percent of Americans who say they haven't settled yet on one man or the other. 

Obama holds a big lead as the candidate who best relates to the needs of poor and middle-class Americans. That advantage could come into sharper focus as Isaac moves slowly toward the U.S. Gulf Coast after forcing Monday's convention opening to be delayed. 

The storm was expected to come ashore late Tuesday or Wednesday somewhere near New Orleans. That resurrected the ghost of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city and killed 1,800 people exactly seven years ago. 

Trying to balance leadership with campaigning, Obama delivered a brief update on Isaac from the White House before leaving. "Now is not the time to tempt fate," he said. "You need to take this seriously." 

Partisanship had not subsided with Isaac's gathering strength. Republicans were determined to play to Romney's strengths this week. He is more highly regarded as the candidate who can restore the economy, the top issue for voters 

Ultimately, it will be up to Romney himself "to let the American people see who he is," said Christie. 

Meanwhile, Republican leaders will try to convince Americans that Obama is a failed president, unable to keep his promise to restore economic vitality and reduce stubbornly high unemployment -- still at 8.3 percent three years after the Great Recession. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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