“This president receives the lion’s share of funding from organized labor, and the teachers’ unions represent a massive source of funding for the Democratic Party,” Romney said. “The challenge with that is when it comes to actual reform to make schools better for our kids, they talk a good game, but they don’t do it.”

He continued, “If I’m president of the United States, instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future.”

The message is consistent for the Romney campaign, which regularly heaps criticism on the Democratic president’s policies but offers only a vague road map for what Romney would do.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that Romney’s shift to education was welcome after a long campaign season in which he said the GOP rarely mentioned the issue.

“Education never came up in the Republican primary in any of the debates, or if it did, it came up almost never,” Carney said.

Carney said Obama’s education initiatives have received broad bipartisan support and that the president “looks forward to defending that record.”

Romney’s shift carries some risk. His regular criticism of labor unions, in particular, threatens to alienate voters in Rust Belt states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a close election may be decided.

Before the speech, Romney announced Tuesday a team of education policy advisers that includes former Education Secretary Rod Paige and other officials from President George W. Bush’s administration. Paige is among several prominent opponents of teachers’ unions on the panel. As education secretary in 2004, he labeled the National Education Association a “terrorist organization.”

Romney’s positions on education have evolved over time. He once supported abolishing the Education Department but reversed that position as a presidential candidate in 2007. At the time, he said he came to see the value of the federal government in “holding down the interests of the teachers’ unions” and putting kids and parents first.

Romney also changed his position on the Bush-era education overhaul known as “No Child Left Behind.” He said he supported the law as a candidate in 2007, but he has since generally come out against the policy many conservatives see as an expansion of the federal government.

Romney continues to support the federal accountability standards in the law, however. He also has said the student testing, charter-school incentives and teacher evaluation standards in Obama’s “Race to the Top” competition “make sense,” although the federal government should have less control over education. The campaign in recent days has emphasized his support for charter schools while governor of Massachusetts, a theme likely to play out in Wednesday’s address.

The speech represents Romney’s first public event in four days. Working to close Obama’s cash advantage, he’s coming off a three-day fundraising swing in the New York area that his chief finance aide said had netted $15 million. A single finance event in Manhattan on Tuesday evening generated $5 million.

Still, the campaign is eager to drive a positive message for voters now tuning in to the contest.

The education speech follows a relatively quiet phase for Romney, who has been focused on fundraising but usually delivers one major address a week. Most of his recent speeches, however, have been about the economic themes that so far have defined his campaign.

Obama has used service academy addresses in the past to discuss the role of the military in protecting American interests in an age of war and terrorism. Since 2009, Obama has delivered commencement addresses at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.

The president this year also spoke to graduating classes at Barnard College in New York, and at Joplin High School in Joplin, Mo., where a massive tornado killed 161 people last year and injured hundreds more.

Following his speech, the president was headed to fundraisers in Denver and California’s Silicon Valley.

Many of the instances involved employees sending sexually suggestive emails. But three were about charges of inappropriate relationships with a foreign national and one was a complaint of “non-consensual intercourse,” Lieberman said in his opening statement. He said the reports did not necessarily show a historical pattern of wrongdoing by agents but he and other lawmakers made clear their conviction that what happened in Columbia was far from an aberration.

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, speaking to the inquiry, apologized for the conduct of the employees in Colombia.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told the hearing several small groups of Secret Service employees separately visited clubs, bars and brothels in Colombia prior to a visit by President Barack Obama last month and engaged in reckless, “morally repugnant” behavior.

Collins said the employees’ actions could have provided a foreign intelligence service, drug cartels or other criminals with opportunities for blackmail or coercion threatening the president’s safety.

And she challenged early assurances that the scandal in Colombia appeared to be an isolated incident. She noted that two participants were Secret Service supervisors — one with 21 years of service and the other with 22 years — and both were married. Their involvement “surely sends a message to the rank and file that this kind of activity is tolerated on the road,” Collins said.

“This was not a one-time event,” said Collins, the senior Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “The circumstances unfortunately suggest an issue of culture.”

Lieberman said: “It is hard for many people, including me, to believe that on one night in April 2012 in Cartagena, Colombia, 11 secret service agents — there to protect the president — suddenly and spontaneously did something they or other agents had never done before; that is to say, gone in groups of two, three or four to four different night clubs or strip joints and drank to excess and bring foreign national women back to their hotel rooms.”

The misbehavior became public after a dispute over payment between a Secret Service agent and a prostitute at a Cartagena hotel on April 12. The Secret Service was in the coastal resort for a Latin American summit before Obama’s arrival.

Collins said several small groups of agency employees from two hotels went out separately to clubs, bars and brothels and they “all ended up in similar circumstances.”

“Contrary to the conventional story line, this was not simply a single, organized group that went out for a night on the town together,” Collins said.

Senators focused on whether the Secret Service permitted a culture in which such behavior was tolerated. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has testified previously that she would be surprised if there were other examples, but senators have been skeptical.

Sullivan told senators the behavior in Colombia wasn’t representative of the agency’s nearly 7,000 employees. “I can understand how the question could be asked,” Sullivan said, calling his employees “among the most dedicated, hardest working, self-sacrificing employees within the federal government.”

He also told senators that Obama’s security was never at risk. The officers implicated in the prostitution scandal could not have inadvertently disclosed sensitive security details because their confidential briefing about Obama’s trip had not taken place.

“At the time the misconduct occurred, none of the individuals involved in the misconduct had received any specific protective information, sensitive security documents, firearms, radios or other security-related equipment in their hotel rooms,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan has survived professionally so far based on his openness about what happened. Senators were not expected to ask for his resignation, and the acting inspector general for the Homeland Security Department, Charles K. Edwards, gave Sullivan high marks for integrity.

Edwards, who estimated that the early stages of his own investigation would be finished before July 2, said the Secret Service “has been completely transparent and cooperative.”

“The Secret Service’s efforts to date in investigating its own employees should not be discounted,” Edwards told senators. “It has done credible job of uncovering the facts and, where appropriate, it has taken swift and decisive action.”

The White House on Tuesday reasserted its confidence in Sullivan. Obama “has great faith in the Secret Service, believes the director has done an excellent job,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “The director moved very quickly to have this matter investigated and took action very quickly as a result of that investigation.”

A dozen Secret Service officers and supervisors and 12 other U.S. military personnel were implicated. Eight Secret Service employees, including the two supervisors, have lost their jobs. The Secret Service is moving to permanently revoke the security clearance for one other employee, and three others have been cleared of serious wrongdoing.

Prostitution is legal in Colombia, but Sullivan quickly issued new guidelines that made it clear that agents on assignment overseas are subject to U.S. laws.

Sullivan said he directed Secret Service inspectors to investigate reports of similar misconduct in San Salvador. After 28 interviews with hotel employees and managers, State Department officials and others, “no evidence was found to substantiate the allegations,” Sullivan said.

This week the Drug Enforcement Administration said the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General was investigating possible misconduct by two or more agents in Colombia. Collins revealed that the case involved at least two DEA employees who entertained female masseuses in the Cartagena apartment of one of the DEA agents. The investigation is unrelated to the Secret Service scandal but is based on information provided to the DEA by the Secret Service.

The film is an uncharacteristically sunny comedy from Loach, a director better known for gritty realism. An audience favorite at Cannes, it could do for Scotch what “Strictly Ballroom” did for ballroom dancing: make it cool.

“The awful thing is, a lot more vodka is drunk in Scotland than whiskey, especially amongst younger people,” MacLean said during a beachside interview in Cannes, where he is serving as an unofficial ambassador for Scotch, as well as for the film.

“It does have this sort of pipe and slippers by the fire, male image,” he said.

The film’s young central characters initially turn up their noses when offered a snifter. Yet Scotch is as central to Scotland’s image abroad as shortbread, “Braveheart” and tartans.

MacLean says it is part of Scotland’s heritage — “the blood of one small nation” — and has been distilled in the country since the 14th century.

“When you buy a bottle of whiskey, you buy a hell of a lot more than liquor in a bottle,” said the affable, mustached MacLean, who is passionate on the subject of his favorite beverage. “Whether you like it or not, you’re buying culture, you’re buying history, you’re buying craft, you’re buying tradition.”

MacLean was initially hired as a script consultant on the film — tutoring some of the actors on whiskey appreciation — before being asked to appear on-screen. He said he enjoyed the experience, but doesn’t plan to repeat it.

“I don’t think I have an acting career ahead of me,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t think I could play any other part.”

MacLean is well used to public speaking, but he found it daunting to film a scene in which he had to lead a tasting in front of an audience of extras.

“I started to sweat — it was a very hot day and I sweat very easily,” he said. “The editor told me yesterday that it had cost him 25,000 pounds ($40,000) to take out the sweat marks under my arms, frame by frame.”

As well as doing interviews and attending the film’s red-carpet premiere, MacLean led a whiskey-tasting session in Cannes, teaching film folk to tell their fruity Speysides from their peaty Islays. It slipped down smoothly with the cinema crowd.

Maclean said he would encourage anyone to give Scotch a try — in moderation, of course.

“It is the most complex of all spirits, and so therefore if and when you acquire the taste it is hugely rewarding,” he said. “But because of its complexity, it is not an easy drink. I have much sympathy with people who can’t stand it. My wife can’t stand it.”

And if “The Angels’ Share” — a full-bodied film with a tart edge and a sweet finish — were a whiskey, what type would it be?

“Bittersweet. Not as elemental as a smoky Islay whisky,” MacLean said, mulling it over before settling on: “Talisker.”

“It’s got a sort of chili pepper in the finish, which is the bitter part, the rough part,” he explained. “It’s a virile whisky, and yet the overall flavor profile is sweet but elemental.”

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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless