McCain Cancels Trip to New Orleans Amid Competing Disasters

Sen. John McCain's trip to New Orleans just wasn't in the cards this week. McCain was scheduled to visit the Crescent City tomorrow to meet with Louisiana Gov, Bobby Jindal -- who today said he will not be McCain's running mate -- to promote his offshore drilling plan with a photo-op on an oil rig. However, Mother Nature had other plans, and the trip was canceled due to bad weather. If you've been watching cable news today, you might have heard something about a little hurricane named Dolly that is currently pummeling San Padre Island and the southern Texas coast. As a result, numerous oil production platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico have been evacuated. The timing of the storm led Politico's Jonathan Martin to proclaim in a humorous headline that the weather, like the media, is liberal and therefore biased against McCain. Martin links to The New Republic's Jason Zengerle, who makes a strong case:

It's not just the press that loves Obama, Mother Nature does, too. Jonathan Martin reported that the McCain campaign would "counterprogram" Obama's big Berlin speech tomorrow by having their guy helicopter from New Orleans to an oil rig off the Gulf Coast and give a speech on off-shore drilling. At last, McCain would have a visual to compete with Obama's. But then along came Hurricane Dolly, and now it looks like the event is off. Meanwhile, Karen Tumulty reported that the weather that greeted Obama in Israel today was "as close to perfect as it is possible to be on this planet."

Now might not be the best time to visit New Orleans to push oil drilling anyway. Fox News reports a barge loaded with 419,000 gallons of fuel oil split in half after colliding with a 600-ft. tanker on the Mississippi River near New Orleans early this morning, spilling an unknown quantity of oil into the river. The article states 29 miles of the river are now closed to ships -- possibly for days -- and the smell of diesel was detectable in the French Quarter. While it is a coincidence -- and not directly related to oil exploration or drilling -- it is hard to view this as anything but a bad omen for McCain. Voodoo, maybe? It's probably best to just spend the night in Ohio.

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