New Orleans - GIVEN President Bush's final decision not to head to Texas in advance of Hurricane Rita, it's worth noting that American presidents have long found both political riches and peril at the scene of a storm. A listen to the tapes of President Lyndon B. Johnson's White House telephone conversations of 40 years ago reveals that history does indeed repeat itself, even if presidential reactions and motivations have varied widely.

On the evening of Sept. 9, 1965, Hurricane Betsy, a Category 4 storm, roared into Louisiana with winds of up to 160 miles per hour. The next day, President Johnson followed coverage of the damage, watching the three television sets in the Oval Office and monitoring the news service wires clacking away inside the soundproof cabinet next to his desk. Then, at 2:36 in the afternoon, Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, son of the legendary Huey Long, called the president and urged him to come to New Orleans. Floodwaters had spilled over the levees, and three-quarters of New Orleans was under water.

The senator opened with a geography lesson. "Mr. President, aside from the Great Lakes, the biggest lake in America is Lake Pontchartrain," he said. "It is now drained dry. That Hurricane Betsy picked up the lake and up and put it inside New Orleans and Jefferson Parish." Long said that his own house had been destroyed, but that his true concern was "my people -- oh, they're in tough shape."

Not fully convinced that his message had gotten through to his old friend and fellow Southerner, Long chose the most direct route to Johnson's famously weak heart: electoral politics. "If you want to go to Louisiana right now -- you lost that state last year you could save yourself a campaign speech," the senator insisted. "Just go there right now and say, 'My God, this is horrible! These federally constructed levees that Hale Boggs and Russell Long built is the only thing that saved 5,000 lives!"'