Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama, center, meets with local residents during his tour of the Bridgewood neighborhood in LaPlace, La., in Saint John the Baptist Parish, as he tours the area to survey the ongoing response and recovery efforts to Hurricane Isaac on Monday.

NEW ORLEANS, La. – At the end of a four-day trip filled with campaign events, President Barack Obama put politics aside to visit a Louisiana town hit by Hurricane Isaac and talk with local officials about the recovery effort.

In brief remarks after touring part of the town of LaPlace in St. John the Baptist Parish, the president said he was impressed by the resiliency of the residents.

“There is enormous faith here, enormous strength here you can see it in these families,” he said. “They were just devastated a few days ago and they're already smiling and laughing,” he said.

Local reports say St. John the Baptist Parish experienced up to 18 inches of floodwater from the hurricane, an unprecedented level of flooding for the parish, according to an administration official.

Before his tour of the neighborhood, the president was briefed by local parish officials about the situation in the area and noted that the biggest concern was helping those who had been displaced.

“Obviously, right now we’re still in recovery mode,” he said.

Obama was accompanied by Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who met him at the airport alongside a bipartisan group that included New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter, Reps. Cedric Richmond and Jeff Landry and FEMA administrator Craig Fugate.

Thanking the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Obama subtly referred to the recovery efforts to mitigate the damage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 under former President George W. Bush, which were widely viewed as a failure.

“In the past we sometimes haven’t seen the kind of coordination needed for these kinds of disasters,” Obama said.

But he also emphasized that this type of natural disaster transcends political labels.

“When disasters like this happen we set aside whatever petty disagreements we might have,” Obama said. “Nobody’s a Democrat or a Republican.”

The president returns to Washington, D.C. on Monday evening. He heads Tuesday to Norfolk, Va. for a campaign event.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Sandra Fluke, waves at a campaign event at the University of Colorado Auraria Events Center on Wednesday. Fluke is a Georgetown law student who inadvertently gained notoriety when talk show host Rush Limbaugh spoke disparagingly of her testimony before Congress on the issue of contraception and insurance coverage.

DENVER, Colo. – Seeking to rally female voters who helped push him to victory in 2008, President Barack Obama warned a crowd of mostly women in Colorado that Mitt Romney would slash the benefits they received last week under the new health care law.

Standing in front of a big sign that read, “WOMEN’S HEALTH SECURITY” to emphasize the day’s message, the president touted recently-implemented measures in the health care law requiring all insurance companies to provide free preventive care for women. The Obama administration reports that 47 million women will receive free contraception, well-woman visits, breastfeeding supplies and family planning counseling.

Obama said Romney would slash those benefits on the first day of his presidency.

“He said he would take the affordable care act and kill it dead -- on the first day of his presidency. Kill it dead,” he said as the crowd of 4,000 at the Auraria Event Center booed.

Reviving a debate over contraceptive coverage from earlier this year in which both parties accused the other of waging a “war on women,” the president said that Romney would let employers decide whether or not to offer women’s health services like contraceptives.

“I don’t think your boss should get to control the health care you get. I don’t think insurance companies should control the care that you get. I don’t think politicians should control the care that you get. I think there’s one person to make these decisions on health care and that is you,” he said.

Obama enlisted a familiar face from the contraception debate to introduce him in Denver: Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student and activist who testified on Capitol Hill about her school not covering birth control and became the face of the Democratic side of the issue after she was called a “slut” and “prostitute” by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Fluke praised the president for “defending my right to speak without being attacked. Mr. Romney could only say those weren’t the words he would have chosen. Well, Mr. Romney, you're not going to be the candidate we choose,” she said.

Obama’s two-day swing through Colorado, which he won by nine points in 2008, comes as a new Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS poll shows him trailing Romney in Colorado by five points, 50-45.

While Obama campaign officials stress that they always believed Colorado would be a competitive state, the president underscored how important he believes the Centennial State is to his re-election when he responded to the crowd’s chant of “four more years!”

“If we win Colorado, I’ll get four more years!” he said.

Obama continues his four-city Colorado trip later tonight in Grand Junction.

Earlier Wednesday, before the president's speech, the Romney campaign sent out figures showing high unemployment rates among women during Obama's tenure, as well as a statement from campaign spokesperson Amanda Henneberg.

“No false, recycled attacks can distract from the fact that President Obama’s four years in office haven’t been kind to women," Henneberg said in the statement. "Hundreds of thousands of women have lost their jobs, poverty among women is highest in nearly two decades, and half of recent graduates can’t find a good job. Middle-class families have struggled in the Obama economy, and Mitt Romney has a plan to strengthen the middle class and get our country back on the right track.”

Brett Flashnick / AP

Protesters line the grounds of the Statehouse for the Occupy Columbia event at the capitol in Columbia, S.C. on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011.

By Ali Weinberg, NBC News campaign embed

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Like the masses who have gathered on Wall Street and elsewhere, the protesters at Occupy Columbia, S.C., on Saturday seemed loosely united through one feeling: frustration.

"There are over a hundred different attitudes," said Columbia resident Mel Jenkins, who was carrying a flag with a large image of Earth on it.

"But there's clearly an understanding that something is broken and it needs to be fixed."

Exactly what that something is depended on whom, among the roughly 200 gathered in front of the South Carolina statehouse here, you asked.

For some, like 55-year-old Karen Smoak, it was the high unemployment rate.

Smoak said she works "very, very part time" jobs after losing her job at the state's public broadcasting network in 2002 due to a budget shortfall that year. She said it had been hard for her, and many others who lose their jobs mid-career, to find new work.

"For far too long the majority has been oppressed in this country," Smoak said. "I myself expected to have my government job, which I worked hard to get, until I was ready to retire."

Travis Bland, 23, who helped organize the demonstration, said he believed people were gathering in order to combat a sense of helplessness.

""Amongst all the grievances, there's this one issue and that is that people feel powerless. People feel absolutely powerless in what's supposed to be a democratic society," said Bland, who said he holds several jobs including with a landscaping company, local newspaper and record store.

Sarah Parker, 18, said she was disappointed in President Barack Obama for not creating more jobs. Parker said she works as a nanny and is taking high school classes online in order to focus on looking for a job.

"I was one of those people that was like, 'Oh, President Obama, go, yeah.' And you promised us change, but yet you're still feeding money to corporations. Where's our money? Where [are] our jobs that you've been promising us?"

Others at the rally decried corporate involvement in politics, as well as banks' role in the financial meltdown. 

"The corporate state has taken a grip of our democracy and we have to get money out of politics," said Bradley Powell, 28, who works at a local independent movie theater.

"The CEOs of the big corporations and banks who got us into this financial mess are not asked to make any sacrifices and are instead rewarded with $25 million bonuses for the year," said Cammy Kennedy, who was holding a sign that said "I can't afford a lobbyist so I made this sign."

While most rally participants insisted the gathering was apolitical, at least one demonstrator expressed frustration over a particular Republican presidential candidate: Herman Cain, whose "9-9-9" plan is the new buzzword in economic policy proposals.

"We don't need 9-9-9. We need jobs, jobs jobs," said Lee Johnson of Columbia, who held up a sign that said, "Damn da 9-9-9."

 "We don't need to be misled by some fantasy slogan," he added.