Hurricane politics

HURRICANE GUSTAV has yet to make landfall, but the storm was already reshaping the presidential campaign yesterday. The storm arrives at a choke point in a tight race; the Republican National Convention is scheduled to begin today. But the party's candidate, Senator John McCain, will be putting on an event much different from what he intended.

President Bush canceled his planned appearance, and today's session will be stripped own considerably. Organizers, understandably, don't want Republicans to seem to be reveling if another national tragedy unfolds.

For residents of the Gulf Coast, of course, there are more pressing concerns than politics. Gustav's approach in recent days was more than a post-traumatic-stress-inducing reminder of the ordeal brought on three years ago by Hurricane Katrina. The new storm also presented more than a million people in southeast Louisiana alone with the immediate dilemma of when and how to leave. Imagine the difficulties if every household in Boston and its inner suburbs had to clear out in a weekend.

Fortunately, the hard lessons of the incomplete evacuation before Katrina and the inept governmental response afterward have clearly sunk in. Many residents who stayed home to ride out Katrina have opted to leave before Gustav. While any community would be hard-pressed to arrange transport and accommodation for all of its poorest, most fragile residents, well-planned bus and train service has carried thousands of New Orleanians to safer points northward.

President Bush's administration has mended its ways, too. After Katrina, Bush was listless. Yesterday, the president turned up in shirtsleeves at FEMA headquarters, assuring the nation that search-and-rescue workers had been thoughtfully deployed and that drinking water would be available for victims in need. His vigor showed that there is quite a lot that the federal government can do when Americans' lives are at risk.

If Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney miss the convention, it hardly hurts McCain, since their unpopularity is a lead weight on his bid. But the adjustments because of Gustav only add to an odd vibe in the Twin Cities. This convention was expected to be an assault on Democrat Barack Obama's credentials, but McCain's surprise choice Friday of a first-term Alaska governor as his running mate complicated the argument significantly.

McCain clearly thinks his scrappy candidacy can succeed even if the political atmospherics don't favor him. But the deadly atmospheric disturbance in the Gulf represents a major new challenge.