TAMPA – Mitt Romney didn’t knock it out of the park tonight. Instead, he delivered a serviceable speech with some humanizing touches and strong lines, but without a cohesive narrative.

The final stretch of the convention was uneven. It started out with stories of people who benefited from Romney’s personal generosity and those who worked with him in business, led by the co-founder of Staples. There was also a great biographical video featuring home movies of the Romney family that made him seem a bit more like a regular guy. But that fed into a bizarre, unscripted and rambling speech by Clint Eastwood in which he had an imaginary conversation with Obama, who was represented by an empty chair. It would have been bad under any circumstances, but it was particularly problematic because it squandered 15 minutes of the crucial prime time hour. Sen. Marco Rubio delivered a stirring speech introducing Romney, but unfortunately because of the Eastwood debacle it was about 10:36 by the time Romney took the stage. That meant the Romney speech spilled past 11 pm, when early risers on the east coast might have been falling asleep.