CLEVELAND _ Stepping into his role as the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump sought Thursday to salvage a convention that has gone badly awry and threw new obstacles onto his already steep path to the White House in November.
"He's got to perform some magic and some miracles," said Mark McKinnon, a top strategist for George W. Bush, the last Republican elected president. "Trump has an opportunity to do a reset. His challenge: It's a really high bar now."
The booing of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday night when he refused to endorse Trump essentially ended all pretense that Republicans stood in solidarity behind their nominee.
Delegates afterward openly trashed Trump or Cruz _ the bitterest of rivals during the primary season _ depending on their allegiance.
Cruz's speech "turned into a big middle finger to this convention," said Shaun Ireland, a Texas delegate and Trump supporter. "He did damage here."
Trump's address, after an introduction by his oldest daughter, Ivanka, was to conclude the final night of the convention, followed by a showering of 125,000 balloons and the classic tableau of the nominee, his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, and their families smiling and waving from the stage.
But the portrait of unity and good cheer could not paper over the difficulties Trump faces.
The stakes for his acceptance speech grew exponentially greater after three days of serial mishaps: a last-gasp floor fight by delegates seeking to thwart the business mogul's nomination; revelations that his wife plagiarized passages in her testimonial address; and, most dramatically, Cruz's snub of Trump during his prime-time speaking slot.
Unrepentant, Cruz ignored demands Thursday that he make amends by immediately endorsing Trump. Instead, he declared he would not be a "servile puppy dog."
"This isn't just a team sport," the senator told fellow Texans at a delegation over breakfast. "We either stand for shared principles or we're not worth anything."
Cruz's refusal, he conceded, was in part a personal matter.
"I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father," he said, referring to Trump demeaning Cruz's wife, Heidi, and suggesting his father was involved in John F. Kennedy's assassination.
"You got to get over it!" shouted one Texan. "This is politics!"
"This is not a game!" Cruz shouted back. "This is not politics. Right and wrong matter!"
The blatant jockeying among Cruz and other potential 2020 presidential candidates _ including the host governor, John Kasich _ underscored the pessimism settling in among many Republicans looking to November.
Conventions, an idealized showcase of a party and its principles, typically inspire optimism about the coming election. But the talk of looking ahead four years has been so prevalent here in Cleveland that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, another potential 2020 aspirant, felt obliged to warn against that mentality in his own Wednesday night speech.
More than most nominees, Trump needed a successful convention to bind the wounds of a fratricidal primary season and, more importantly, reassure the majority of Americans who have trouble visualizing the TV showman and business tycoon as the nation's commander in chief.
He faces a tough climb to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House and is in desperate need of a rehab and image makeover with women, college-educated voters, Latinos, African-Americans and other significant swaths of the electorate.
The last several days have made that effort more difficult.
Once more, Thursday's run-up to the evening program consisted of a series of damage-control efforts.
Paul Manafort, the chairman of Trump's campaign, backpedaled when asked about a New York Times interview in which Trump seemed to suggest the U.S. may not honor its defense commitment to NATO allies.
"What Mr. Trump has said consistently is that he thinks NATO needs to be modernized" to fight terrorist threats, Manafort told reporters at a morning briefing.
Trump and his allies also sought to minimize the import of Cruz's snub, portraying it as an instance of classlessness and political expedience.
"The problem is, he's so unlikable," Donald Trump Jr. said about Cruz in a CNN interview, emulating his father's penchant for personal put-downs. "Literally no fans, no friends."
It was not just the unity effort that went awry.
Trump had promised to use his theatrical gift and a dazzling array of speakers to inject some rare pizzazz into the four-day program.
Instead, there were technical glitches _ including a Wednesday night crash of the jumbo screen inside the convention hall, slipshod scheduling that pushed some key speakers out of TV's prime time and an eclectic group of little-known actors and others whose sole qualification was their admiration for Trump.
The result was a lack of any coherent political message for voters seeking insights into Trump's approach to handling the presidency or his solutions to the problems _ dysfunction at home, chaos overseas _ that speakers repeatedly railed against.
One of the few bright spots was Pence, who delivered a well-received acceptance speech that mixed self-deprecation with strong conservative principles close to the heart of the GOP's core activists.
But that's only a start on the considerable work Trump and his running mate will need to do between now and Nov. 8 to cap one of the most improbable political rises in modern history with a move into the White House.
