Did you notice how eagerly the McCain camp scaled back the Republican National Convention on account of Hurricane Gustav? And did you notice how quickly Bush and Cheney backed out of their scheduled attendance? Even after the hurricane was downgraded from Class 4 to Class 2, and then to a tropical storm, Convention planners kept festivities to a bare minimum.

Seems to me they were all a little too eager. For the past several weeks, Republicans have been very nervous about Bush, and especially Cheney, attending the Convention. They’ve been nervous because the Bush Administration is extremely unpopular with American voters, so the McCain camp has struggled to avoid appearing too closely tied to Bush while simultaneously trying to avoid the embarrassment of excluding a sitting president from speaking at his own party’s National Convention. Hurricane Gustav provided the happy excuse that Bush and McCain both needed: Bush was scheduled to appear, but was called away by a national crisis.

Hurricane Gustav provided McCain with a second benefit: an excuse for why his National Convention is drawing a much smaller crowd than Barack Obama’s National Convention drew last week. When cameras pan over empty chairs at the Republican convention, right-wing pundits can blame the hurricane, rather than blaming the dearth of enthusiasm that McCain has generated with American voters. Even with McCain’s bizarre nomination of Caribou Barbie as his running mate, McCain’s campaign has produced all the excitement of a wet sock. Scaling back the convention “because of the hurricane” nicely explains the silence.