Obama back in WH to battle Hurricane Sandy

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama rushed through the edge of Hurricane Sandy Monday, putting his re-election bid on hold to lead his government through a sudden crisis which reduced the White House race to chaos.

Facing the kind of unpredictable “October Surprise” that campaign chiefs dread, Obama ditched high-profile political events just a week before voters decide his neck-and-neck struggle with Republican Mitt Romney.

Air Force One touched down after a flight from Florida just as the potentially historic storm’s outer bands drenched the northeast US coast and threatened millions with flooding and power cuts.

“The balance tilts heavily towards, in a situation like this, his responsibilities as president,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, explaining Obama’s decision to quit the campaign trail.

“This is a time not for politics,” he said, ostensibly taking the high road, at a moment of both political peril and opportunity for the president as Sandy’s wallop disrupted the endgame of the November 6 election.

Obama will direct the government response to the storm from the secure Situation Room below the White House, immediately setting up a contrast with his out-of-office challenger.

Romney has already been accused of muscling in on tragedy for political gain — over the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last month — and so can ill afford any missteps seen as motivated by a hope of an electoral dividend.

Equally, any errors by Obama in the wake of the storm could help Romney build his case that Benghazi was a symptom of a wider malaise and unraveling of leadership in the White House.

Obama had been due to appear with popular ex-president Bill Clinton in Florida, Virginia and Ohio on Monday, and also cancelled campaign travel to swing states Colorado and Wisconsin on Tuesday.

He decided to get back home quickly after the storm picked up intensity and speed overnight, aides said.

“Obviously my first priority has to be to make sure that everything is in place for families,” the president told campaign workers in Florida late Sunday.

“That’s going to be putting a little bit more burden on folks in the field, because I’m not going to be able to campaign quite as much over the next couple of days.”

Romney planned to go on with events in swing state Ohio — which many pundits believe will decide who wins the tightly poised election — and Iowa though will likely tame his rhetoric in deference to the situation.

High level campaign operatives deplore events they cannot control, hence the fabled history of the “October Surprise” — the sudden happening, at home or abroad, with the potential to reshape the late stages of an election.

Though the disaster alert allowed Obama to leverage the advantage of incumbency and to showcase his leadership skills, it also left him carrying the can if the government’s disaster response to the storm is revealed as lacking.

Top US office holders have been acutely aware of the potential of disasters to wreak a political price ever since president George W. Bush’s bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina seven years ago.

The disastrous confluence of miscommunication and chaotic governing that left thousands stranded in New Orleans seemed unlikely to be repeated, given reforms in relief and emergency response by the Obama administration.

Local political leaders like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also appear of a higher caliber than Louisiana’s hapless leadership in 2005.

So it may be that the prime political impact of Sandy will weigh on the election endgame.

Romney risks becoming an afterthought, especially if there is widespread loss of life or damage, and could see the momentum he has built up in recent weeks squelched as Obama tries to shape the narrative of the storm.

He did make an attempt to inject himself into what is likely to be days of news coverage dominated by Sandy’s assault, in which the president is also likely to play a prominent role.

“Ann and I are keeping the people in Hurricane Sandy’s path in our thoughts and prayers,” Romney said in an email message to supporters.

“I’m never prouder of America than when I see how we pull together in a crisis. There’s nothing that we can’t handle when we stand together,” Romney said.

Romney aide Kevin Madden told reporters his boss had already got his message across to those in the hurricane’s path and said the safety of voters and their families was now the priority.

“I wouldn’t even want to even trivialize it by talking about the state of the race when you have so many people right now that are going to be adversely impacted by the storm,” he said.

The hurricane and likely widespread power cuts in swing states like Virginia will also disarm both campaigns, which had planned to deluge voters with non-stop television advertising in the final days.

When the storm brings days of disrupted weather inland, it could also dampen early voting turnout, even in places as sheltered as midwestern Ohio or battleground New Hampshire, on which the Obama campaign is counting.

Romney leads by a few points in some national polls of the popular vote, but Obama appears to be clinging to a narrow advantage in the state-by-state race to 270 electoral votes needed to secure the White House.

But Obama was up one point, a swing back to the president of three points from last week, in the latest GWU/Politico/Battleground poll Monday.