The evacuation went smoothly and the levees largely held, limiting damage from the big storm. Still some areas of the Gulf coast sustained serious damage, and eight people died in the U.S. as a result of Gustav, which had killed 94 across the Caribbean.

As Gustav advanced towards New Orleans on Saturday, Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mass evacuation of the city, curtailing Southern Decadence, the largest gay festival in the South that was to have gone on throughout the Labor Day weekend.

It was the second time in three years that a major hurricane disrupted the massive party centered in the French Quarter.  In 2005, hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, forcing cancellation of Southern Decadence.

The festival, which takes over the French Quarter regularly, attracted more than 100,000 people and had been one of the city’s biggest moneymakers. This year attendance was lower as concerns mounted that Gustav was heading toward the Big Easy.

The party has had its detractors in a city known for hard partying. In 2003, the state legislature passed a new indecency law that bans public nudity.

The festival also has been the target of evangelical preacher Rev Grant E. Storms, who leads a small group of demonstrators through the throngs on Bourbon Street. In the wake of Katrina, some conservative church leaders said the devastation was the result of God’s wrath on gays.

Tuesday, city officials began examining damage from Gustav.  Power is out in some areas of the city. The sewer system was damaged, and hospitals are working with skeleton crews on backup power.

But residential areas appear secure, and drinking water is safe.

With Gustav downgraded to a tropical depression and evacuees looking to return to their Gulf Coast homes, the Republican National Convention eyed its own return to normal. Whether President Bush would address delegates via satellite Tuesday night had not been decided, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The convention seeks to reintroduce Americans to McCain and provide a high-profile introduction for his running mate. Palin, the governor of Alaska for nearly two years, is little-known outside of her state.

So far, Palin has not conducted a formal news conference or taken questions from reporters, and no such sessions were scheduled Tuesday. Her only statement Monday disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant and that she would marry the baby’s father.

That news was followed by the announcement that a private lawyer had been hired to represent Palin in a state investigation into her firing of the state’s public safety commissioner.

“We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents,” the statement said.

The man who led McCain’s search for a vice-presidential nominee said he thought all the possible red flags unearthed during the background check had now been made public.

Under the weight of Gustav, speeches at the convention on Monday were light on red-meat rhetoric and heavy with appeals for donations to victims of the Gulf Coast storm, which was the main message in brief remarks from Laura Bush and her would-be successor, Cindy McCain.

“This is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats,” said Cindy McCain.

Added the first lady, “Our first priority for today and in the coming days is to ensure the safety and well-being of those living in the Gulf Coast region.”

McCain’s Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, also appealed to his supporters, asking them in a mass e-mail and text message to donate to the Red Cross. His schedule for the rest of the week was also up in the air as he returned to Chicago headquarters to monitor the storm’s aftermath.

The mood on the floor as the convention began its official activities was muted and more businesslike than usual, delegates said. Some said they were eager for the politics to resume.

“If things turn out to be not so bad as we had expected, things probably will go back to a more normal agenda,” said Grace Hickman, an Oklahoma delegate. “I would like for us to be able to have a more complete convention, like the Democrats had theirs, but we also have to think about the country and the people in Louisiana.”

White House officials held out the possibility President Bush would make a televised address to the convention from Washington. The decision on Bush’s role, if any, appeared to rest with the McCain campaign, which has tried to distance the Arizona senator from the unpopular president.

Outside the Xcel Energy Center where the convention officially began, police contended with thousands of protesters, some of whom attacked a group of Connecticut delegates.

Others smashed cars, punctured tires and threw bottles, while many marched peacefully in a gathering that was initially conceived as an anti-war demonstration. Police arrested a few protesters for lighting a trash container on fire and pushing it into a police car.

The debate about the Iraq war – a chief issue in the presidential race – was largely avoided in the Republican party platform adopted during the opening session. The platform said “the waging of war – and the achieving of peace – should never be micromanaged in a party platform. … In dealing with present conflicts or future crises, our next president must preserve all options.”

The war was likely to get a second day of attention outside the convention on Tuesday as Ron Paul, a former GOP presidential candidate who opposes the war, was expected to speak to supporters at a Minneapolis rally. Separately, a group advocating for the poor was planning a protest march toward the convention center.

During a flight from Denver to South Carolina last Friday, Don Fowler – who was DNC chair in 1995 and 1996 – was recorded telling a fellow passenger that it appears Gustav will make landfall on Monday.

He said that just demonstrates that God is on the side of Democrats.

The person whom Fowler was talking to is not visible in the video, but was identified on the conservative Web site www.redstate.com as Representative John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat.

Fowler told The Associated Press that he was making fun of comments made by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Falwell said after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that the attacks were God’s punishment for abortion, homosexuality and other sins.

“This is a point of national concern. I think everybody of good will has great empathy and sympathy for people in New Orleans,” Fowler said Sunday.

“Most religious people are praying for people in New Orleans. There is no political connotation to this whatsoever. This was just poking fun at Jerry Falwell and the nonsensical thing he had said several years ago.”

Fowler said if anyone was offended, he apologized.

“I don’t believe in a God that’s vengeful. I believe in a God that’s compassionate,” he said.

South Carolina Republican party chairman Katon Dawson called Fowler’s comments “disappointing and despicable.”

“A storm is not a partisan event and that is what they’ve done. I am outraged,” Dawson said.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin used stark language at a Saturday night news conference to urge residents to get out of the city, calling Gustav the “storm of the century.”

“This is the real deal, not a test,” Nagin said as he issued the evacuation order Saturday night. “For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for you: that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your life.”

Gustav already has killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean.

Nagin’s evacuation order is the first test of a revamped evacuation plan designed to eliminate the chaos, looting and death that followed Katrina.

The city will not offer emergency services to those who choose stay behind, Nagin said, and there will be no “last resort” shelter as there was during Katrina, when thousands suffered inside a squalid Superdome. The city said in a news release that those not on their property after the mandatory evacuation started would be subject to arrest.

Many residents didn’t need to be ordered, with an estimated 1 million people fleeing the Gulf Coast on Saturday by bus, train, plane and car. They clogged roadways, emptied gas stations of fuel and jammed phone circuits.

Southern Decadence, held over the Labor Day Weekend, regularly attracted more than 100,000 people and had been one of the city’s biggest moneymakers. This year, attendance was lower, as concerns mounted that Gustav was heading toward the Big Easy.

The party has had its detractors in a city known for hard partying.  In 2003, the state legislature passed a new indecency law that bans public nudity.

The festival also has been the target of evangelical preacher Rev Grant E. Storms, who leads a small group of demonstrators through the throngs on Bourbon Street. In the wake of Katrina some conservative church leaders said the devastation was the result of God’s wrath on gays.

Most people fled New Orleans as Katrina approached, but a small number of people remained in the city, and amid the destruction a small parade behind a tattered rainbow flag made its way up Bourbon Street in an unofficial celebration of Southern Decadence.  The group – about two dozen people – all said they lived in the largely gay French Quarter.  Defiant, they said they were not about to flee the community despite orders from the city to do so.

Fumble the response again and the Democrats will pounce, especially given that Gustav could make landfall in the midst of the Republican National Convention, which opens Monday in St. Paul, Minn.

Do well by the public and Republicans can crow.

And if the storm never comes ashore? Wait until next time.

Since Katrina, which struck New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, the public pays closer attention to how its government copes with hurricanes.

“If it does work out well, it will probably be a small plus for us,” said New York Rep. Peter King, top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees federal disaster response operations. “Obviously, if it doesn’t work out well, then the Republicans are going to have a problem.”

Forecasters predicted Gustav could strengthen into a powerful Category 3 hurricane – the same strength as Katrina – and hit the U.S. Gulf Coast sometime next week, anywhere from southern Texas to the Florida Panhandle. Another tropical storm is also developing off the Atlantic.

Troy Gibson, political science professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, said Republicans could use it to their advantage if Gustav is as destructive as Katrina because they will have center stage at the convention to champion their commitment to relief efforts and getting it right.

“But,” King warned, “it’s more of a problem if you’re the guy living in the eye of the storm.”

The life-and-death implications of Gustav are clear, regardless of political leanings.

“Our concern is for the lives in the storm’s potential path,” said Amber Wilkerson, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Many lessons have been learned since Katrina, when about 1,600 people were killed and 1 million others were displaced from their homes.

The Bush administration is in regular contact with Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Jindal has said he will skip the convention because of the storm. Nagin, widely criticized in 2005 for not evacuating his city before Katrina, left the Democratic National Convention early to return home. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has held up his plans to go to Minnesota. The White House is also concerned that Gustav will throw Bush’s schedule off, and possibly force him to cancel his McCain-boosting, farewell appearance as Monday night’s star at the Republican National Convention. The White House says it’s too early to say whether Gustav could force any change in Bush’s schedule. A Republican convention spokeswoman said there are no plans to delay the events.

The homeland security secretary and Federal Emergency Management Agency chief were in Louisiana on Thursday. New Orleans and Louisiana officials were poised to evacuate residents; equipment has been set in position; safe shelters were readied; cots, blankets and hygiene kits were en route to the region.

“This is not about politics. It’s about people and doing what’s right,” said James Lee Witt, a former FEMA administrator who is advising Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on homeland security and disasters. Witt is confident the agency will do better this time.

But Witt’s previous boss, former President Clinton, rallied Democrats around the administration’s Katrina failures when he spoke Wednesday at the convention.

“What about Katrina and cronyism?” Clinton said, followed by a chorus of “boos” from the crowd. “My fellow Democrats, America can do better than that.”

Clinton was referring to Bush appointee Michael Brown, a former official with the International Arabian Horse Association who led FEMA during Katrina. Brown was forced to resign shortly after the storm as the extent of the agency’s failings became clear.

Brown – best remembered for Bush’s comment, “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job!” – is prepared for a slew of “Brownie” jokes in the coming days as Katrina and hurricane response make their way back into the news.

But Brown admonishes, “You don’t play politics with disasters.”

He said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that both parties will try to use the brewing storm to their advantage.

In light of that, Brown offers this advice to Obama and GOP candidate John McCain: “Come on, guys, be statesmen and use this as an opportunity to educate the public about how important it is to fully fund firefighters, to educate the public and to be prepared.”

He added, “Listen to the guy that’s been on the mountaintop and listen to the guy that’s been down into the valley of, you know, where nothing worked. And listen to what I have to say.”

And Brown offers this advice to the administration: “Don’t let the media control the message.”