Party time

Rich Lowry:

IT'S certainly not the most important thing about the storm that could wreak havoc on the Gulf Coast, but Gustav is an irresistible metaphor for all that John McCain has to overcome this convention week.

McCain has to transcend:

* A president of his own party who was decisively tuned out by the public after his botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

* His party's loss of its reputation for competence, shredded by Katrina and mistakes in the Iraq war.

* And the sourness of a public that, partly in light of all of the above, thinks in huge numbers that the country is on the wrong track.

And he has to do it while splitting the screen with a monster hurricane and its aftermath.

The McCain team has scrapped everything except the formalities for today and may do the same for tomorrow. By any reasonable standard, this is an over-reaction: Political conventions are the very stuff of our democracy, and the glory of democracy is that - through wars, civil strife, and all manner of other crises - it always goes on.

On "Fox News Sunday" yesterday, McCain explained: "It just wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster." It's an understandable sentiment, applied too sweepingly.

If McCain wants to avoid festiveness, that would entail canceling the parties, not the speeches. The presentations from the podium could be made more sober and stripped of harsh partisan rhetoric.

It is strange to use the occasion of a national challenge to shortchange one of the few occasions a political party has to address a broad public about how it plans to address our many national challenges. Handled appropriately, the speeches could have been a stirring call for national unity and purpose.

...

One of the things the hurricane has done is give the Republicans a chance to showcase their competence and Bobby Jindal has done that is spades. I am still wowed by his press briefing on Sunday. The level of his detailed knowledge on the evacuation was just incredible. The contrast with the former Democrat governor could not be more striking. The other states in the effected region also have Republican governors and you can also see the cooperation they are giving to Louisiana and Mississippi for the storm.

What the RNC needs to do is give these guys an opportunity to speak at the convention by satellite feed as they work through the storm. There is an opportunity here to be seized. The Chinese characters for "crises" are made up of two ideograms. The first means trouble and the second means opportunity. We must not overlook the second.

As for toning down today's activities, the media was going to have at best a split screen look at them anyway. The best way to capture their attention is to put the Gulf states governors own to talk about the storm and what they are doing to deal with it. That ought to be the thrust of this evenings program.