From The Boston Globe
Editorial

Hurrican 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.

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