In case we all lose all electrical power, and are all deafened by the derisive laughter from above of millions of long-dead Mayans, I thought I'd make this point as clearly as I can before I wind up blogging with chalk on the back of the family coal scuttle.

Anybody who says they know how this gigantic weather event is going to "impact the election" is lying to you. Nobody knows anything on this one. Certainly, there are practical considerations. There are several states in the path of the storm — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, again — that have Republican governors empowered to create and maintain states of emergency. (Not that I suspect that any of them would use those powers to partisan advantage. Oh, no, not I.) It can play havoc with the popular vote in the most populous areas of the country, increasing the possibility of a popular vote/electoral vote split, and all the lovely civility that will surely result from such an eventuality. And, let us never forget, Our Nation's Capital reacts to even the gentlest touch of bad weather with all the cool aplomb of a food riot. (Three inches of snow and they're cutting up goats on a rock in Lafayette Park.) This storm is punching Washington right in the pundits. It is entirely possible that the entire government-media-political industrial complex will shut down for several days. This may or may not be a bad thing.

However, as to the campaign itself, and taking as axiomatic that almost anything can "impact" an election as close as this one apparently is shaping up to be, there's absolutely no telling what the effect of massive four-day weather event in the middle of this week will have on the events of the middle of next week. Certainly, in situations like this, the president has several trump cards he can play simply by virtue of being the incumbent. He can act as president. He can engage FEMA and the rest of the federal disaster apparatus to help those governors, Republican and Democratic, who are in the path of the storm. (He just might be in more pictures with Chris Christie over the next week than with Joe Biden.) He can demonstrate, top to bottom, by example, why "leaving it to the states" and, worse, "the private sector can do it better" are empty platitudes. The storm is hitting 12 states. This is something we need to do as one country. (And, also not for nothing, but Paul Ryan's "budgets" would eviscerate our ability to do this.) The president can enlist Christie, or Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, or Mitch McConnell in flood-prone Kentucky, or Bob McDonnell and Eric Cantor in Virginia, in that effort, and they will have no real way to avoid it. In fact, here's Cantor, being a fool last year about the people who were flooded out by Hurricane Irene....

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said "if there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental."

(Okay, float away, foof. See if I care. Reason No. Infinity why I never will be president.)

The problem, of course, is that a good piece of the political opposition doesn't recognize this president as president when the sun's shining. The people who will tell you that disaster relief is best left to the states, or to the private sector, are going be howling at the White House if some cat isn't brought down from a tree in Cape May in less than five minutes. There are a thousand things that can go unavoidably wrong in a situation like this. It is the most fertile environment imaginable for unpredictability. The good news for the president is that he's in charge. The bad news for the president is that he's in charge, and the opposition is still truthless, and demented.

Here's the last thing that I'd like to throw out there before we all go 1856 all over for a while. This entire campaign has been fought out over the issue of whether or not we are all members of a viable political commonwealth with implicit mutual obligations to act through our government — a self-government that is, or ought to be, the purest creative project of that commonwealth — for the common good, or whether that government is a some sort of alien entity repressing our fundamental entrepreneurial energy. Over the next few days, I believe, we are going to see that argument brought to the sharpest point possible. If you want to see how this event will "impact the election," look to what answer to that question emerges from the storm. It will tell us a lot about the election, and about ourselves.

UPDATE: Chris Christie, Your Future President, Sandy Edition

FLASHBACK: Governor Romney After the Flood

PLUS: Mitt Romney & the Relief from Disaster Relief and Obama vs. the FEMA Sequesterers

THE LONG READ: Tom Chiarella on FEMA Director Craig Fugate >>

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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