Beyond the Dome

There’s an interesting test of crisis communications going on in the run-up to the Republican convention right now. With Hurricane Gustav bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and convention plans changing by the minute, what’s a Republican member of Congress to say about all those reminders of Katrina — and the famously bad handling of it by the Bush administration?

From the sound of things, the talking points are already out. We’re supposed to get an announcement of the revised convention plans at 3 p.m. Central time this afternoon (full coverage elsewhere on the main CQPolitics.com site). But for now, Republican lawmakers are tying the storm plans to one of John McCain’s central campaign themes: putting the country’s interests above party politics.

A short time ago, I talked to Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who was running around trying to figure out the same thing we all are — what comes next in the Twin Cities. Technically, Coleman said, the Republicans have to have a convention in some form. They can’t have a presidential nominee without one. But “John McCain’s whole message is about putting country first,” Coleman said, and whatever the Republicans do with their rewritten convention agenda, whether it’s a telethon or something else, will be geared toward that theme.

“We will be sending a very clear message to this convention that it’s country first, not politics first,” Coleman said.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said when he addressed the issue on CNN’s Late Edition earlier today. “John McCain’s someone who’s always put the country first,” said Boehner, who has been one of McCain’s main congressional allies during the presidential campaign. “And, clearly, when you look at this potential disaster, putting the country first is the right thing to do.”

And McCain, for his part, is weaving that theme into his statements already. “I pledge that tomorrow night, and if necessary throughout our convention, we will act as Americans and not as Republicans because America needs us now,” McCain said earlier today, according to the Associated Press.

What, exactly, that involves will probably become clear in a couple of hours. But it seems that the Republicans are already trying to take their cues from the new leader of their party, and how they deal with Gustav will be an important test of whether they can apply their new political theme in a sensitive way to an impending disaster.