Remember when our Fearless Leader Bush, wanting to show how He Really Cared after having killed so many people in Katrina’s wake, took some trips down there–and as a result, probably killed some more? Remember when people were still stuck on their rooftops and people were still drowning, but when Bush flew in to tell Brownie what a heckuva job he was doing, he caused several Coast Guard helicopters to be grounded for PR beauty shots (see right) when they should have been out rescuing people?

Well, McCain wants to be like George.

In the day or two before Gustav hits, millions are being evacuated. People are literally running for their lives. Not a single dollar, man-hour, or moment should be lost, lest somebody gets caught in this storm who cannot handle it, and they die.

So what is McCain doing? Getting in the way.

Likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are traveling to Mississippi to check on people getting prepared for Hurricane Gustav.

McKain aides say McCain and his wife Cindy will join Palin in traveling to Jackson, Miss., Sunday at the invitation of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. They said the McCains and Palins want to check on preparations because they are concerned about the people threatened by the storm, which is heading through the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the same area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina three years ago. The storm could hit the coast as early as Monday afternoon.

They will receive a briefing at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency – a permanent operations center monitoring hurricane response.

Excuse me. They want to “check on preparations”? Who do they think they’re possibly kidding? As if they know the first thing about such things, better than people on the ground? What are they going to do, pull out their degrees in disaster management and start fixing all the problems down there?

Hell, no–they’re going to do the same thing they do when they go to Iraq: waste the valuable time of people with an urgent mission so they can look serious in front of cameras and win votes. And by doing so, they are slowing down and generally hampering efforts which people depend upon for their lives.

In choosing Palin, McCain showed that he took politics more seriously than the best interests of his country. By taking this little PR tour of a region bracing for disaster, he is showing that he takes politics more seriously than the lives of his country’s citizens.

Heckuva job, McSamey!

Update: Obama gets it right:

“The thing that I always am concerned about in the middle of a storm is whether we’re drawing resources away from folks on the ground because the Secret Service and various security requirements; sometimes it pulls police, fire and other departments away from concentrating on the job.”

Obama said he would stay clear of the area until things settled down and then decide how to help.

So there you have it: McCain wants PR even if it costs people their lives, while Obama understands that he really can’t contribute anything in person and so wisely hangs back and doesn’t distract people at a critical time.

Whose judgment do you prefer?