9/11 2.0?

Yeah, I'm here, unscathed and feeling odd about being unscathed. I'm reading that seven and a half million people are without power in the East, many of them here in New York City, but here in Manhattan north of 42nd Street we've had nothing more than flickers; the power's been on consistently, and we're not flooded. It's almost as weird to be unscathed as it was on 9/11. But the city's not functioning very well -- the subways ran the day after 9/11, but they're not running now, and may not soon (who knows how much corrosion the seawater is causing to all that old metal). Meanwhile, the media focus is bizarre -- there's been more attention paid to false rumors of serious flooding at the New York Stock Exchange than there has been to, say, Staten Island, which seems to be experiencing a mini-Katrina.

What's reminding me of 9/11 is the Romney campaign's response: the focus on prayer and private charity in his pronouncements, which is meant to be a contrast to all that icky secularism and big government we liberals and Democrats are said to believe in. (Well, yeah, I do believe in FEMA -- and this week, apparently, Romney says he does too, so never mind what he may have said sixteen months ago.) President Obama will call for prayers and Red Cross donations as well (his campaign Web site was calling for Red Cross donations before the storm hit, as was Romney's), but Romney rushed to brand himself as the private-sector-'n'-Jesus guy in this situation. I fear it's going to play well. This sort of thing has the tendency to make pious heartlanders feel that it's their crisis, merely because they pray harder. I hated that after 9/11, and I'm going to hate it now if it happens.