The winds of GOP politics

I'D HATE TO BE London, matching Beijing’s show at the Olympics.
I’d hate to be the Republican National Convention, matching the DNC in Denver.
I’d hate to be John McCain, matching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. That’s like swimming against Michael Phelps.
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THEN THERE'S the George Bush problem. Let us count all the ways and degrees of dislike between the President and Sen. McCain who will be the RNC nominee to succeed him.
Yet somehow they have to share the convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
When you read Peter Baker’s NYT Magazine piece “His Final Days,” you feel like McCain should stay in one of the Twin Cities and Bush in the other. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/magazine/31bush-t.html?ex=1377835200&en=5c7509e2226dd6cc&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
(It’s curious: The online New York Times changes the headline to “The Final Days,” as though a fastidious copy editor thought better of hinting at the president’s physical mortality and not merely his political demise. That’s a squeamish sensitivity, if so).
McCain doesn’t like wearing the failed Bush presidency around his neck while campaigning against Obama. Bush worries the senator will lose anyway, failing to validate his two terms in office for history.
Baker, who is writing a book on the Bush years, says McCain wonders if the president, who defeated him cruelly in South Carolina for nomination eight years ago, will beat him again due to that legacy.
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BUT WAIT! HERE comes Gustaf.
He’s a terrifying hurricane, landing in a terrorized Gulf Region still crippled by Katrina and the recovery, one of President Bush’s notable failures.
So Bush will stay at his post and perhaps miss the convention where he was expected to make an opening night speech.
Let us not be cynical and say it’s a convenient way for the McCain convention to avoid the Bush problem. And for Bush to avoid his McCain problem.
Willing suspension of disbelief in politics – as in theater – lets us think the president really is needed at the head of relief efforts.
Never mind this is no detail president, that he merely signs disaster declarations with near ceremonial routine and that national concerns never got in the way of his Texas vacations.
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FOR THAT MATTER the whole Republican conclave may be truncated or rewritten around Gustav. Can’t appear to be throwing a party when people are climbing out of the rubble.
A shorty convention might even spare Sen. McCain the comparison between the GOP production and the Beijing style production values of the Democrats.
Chief among the items of disequilibrium will be his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as vice-presidential candidate vs. Sen. Obama’s widely hailed selection of Sen. Joe Biden.
If you squint real hard at the governor, you can see her maybe as a possible nominee for Secretary of the Interior. She has natural resources, Native Americans and national parks in her state although only two years in office.
Biden endured the full scrutiny of his own presidential candidacy and a national and foreign policy experience larger than Gov. Palin’s largest state in the Union.
Still, she seemed to be getting a pass from commentators on the first NBC Meet the Press after McCain named her as running mate. The exception was not strictly speaking a journalist but the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
(That show sure does miss its late moderator, Tim Russert).
Ms. Goodwin sees the dice throw as dangerous for the ticket, since we look at McCain’s age and wonder if he has picked a successor in office we would pick to be our president.
The media might well ask on behalf of us all if we want a president who shoots craps in the first place.
But the roundtable graciousness on Meet the Press suggests the Republicans may be treated to a journalistic easy ride. Toughness, move over for equanimity.
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SO MAYBE THE Gustaf interlude will cover sins of omission by the Press too.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper announced he would choose the Gulf over the Twin Cities, when the hurricane hits the region so close to its third anniversary after Katrina.
If an entourage of the Press deserts St. Paul for Gustafland, political reporters will get a similar pass the GOP will enjoy for a scaled down convention.
They won’t have to display the same scrutiny of Gov. Palin as the near hostility shown for instance to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton until she acquitted herself so well at the Democrat’s convention.
And they won’t have to display the same skepticism of Sen. McCain they used for Sen. Obama until he gave a soaring acceptance speech watched by more people than watched the opening of the The Games in Beijing.
The Londontown of politics may get a windbreak for everyone concerned.