ST. PAUL, Minn. - Fearful of celebratory images as a hurricane headed for the Gulf Coast, Republicans scrapped an opening night convention program that was to have featured speeches by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
"This is a time when we do away with our party politics," the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, said yesterday, shortly after Bush announced he would not travel to Minnesota for his planned convention address tonight.
The national convention would open on schedule with an "abbreviated" session of routine business but no prime-time speeches, McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, said. Officials would evaluate conditions each day before deciding whether planned presentations would resume, he said.
McCain said in an interview with NBC that it was possible he would make his acceptance speech on Thursday not from the convention podium but via satellite from the Gulf Coast region.
With a dangerous storm threatening Louisiana, Bush said he would visit an emergency operations center in Austin, Texas, today rather than head to Minnesota, and would later travel to Louisiana.
First lady Laura Bush was also to speak tonight, along with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had earlier canceled his appearance to deal with budget negotiations in Sacramento.
Republican officials said they were encouraging businesses, lobbyists and others to turn their convention parties into fundraisers for hurricane relief efforts, recognizing the damage that could be done by images of political leaders' revelry as Gulf Coast residents suffer.
The Maryland delegation has not altered its plans. Most of the events are luncheons, delegation chairman Donald Murphy said. "We've got to eat," he said.
The president's planned appearance here had presented difficulties for the McCain campaign, which has distanced itself from an incumbent with low approval ratings.
Democrats have been trying to link McCain to Bush after eight years of a Republican administration, and Barack Obama unveiled a message of "eight is enough" during his acceptance speech last week.
"If McCain has his druthers, Bush would never show up," said Doug Schoen, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. "They don't like each other."
Gustav now raises the prospect that, for the first time in decades, a two-term president would be deprived of the opportunity to summarize his legacy and make a pitch that his party remain in power.
