As Hurricane Gustav winds down, Gulf State southerners are beginning to make their way home, only this time with a little more faith in their government.

Sure, Gustav hardly rivaled Hurricane Katrina's power, but the mass exodus executed by FEMA and state and local governments proved two important things: governments can learn from their mistakes and can do a good job. The evacuation went smoothly - partly because residents were more willing to evacuate this time around, but mostly because all levels of government worked tirelessly in preparation. The levees seemed to have withstood a decent pounding, despite not being completed. And in stark contrast to the Katrina recovery effort, there were adequate stockpiles of food, water, and supplies ready ahead of time.

“'It's amazing. It makes me feel really good that so many people are saying, 'We as Americans, we as the world, have to get this right this time,''' New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told the Associated Press before Hurricane Gustav hit. '”We cannot afford to screw up again.”

Indeed they can't, especially during an election year when Presidential hopeful Barak Obama continues to highlight the Katrina debacles as an example of poor Republican leadership at the highest government levels, and rightfully so. As the Post eloquently states, "The lackluster federal response [to Katrina] laid bare Bush's failure to pay attention to core functions of government -- and a serious empathy problem." 

So it should not have surprised anyone when Senator Obama chastised federal leadership - namely President Bush and his political appointees - in his acceptance speech last week by stating that Americans should not tolerate a government "that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes." And so rose the tides of Katrina to weigh heavily upon the minds of Americans once again. As Gustav spun towards New Orleans, government leaders at all levels were fully aware of the humanitarian and political stakes riding those storm surges.

In the end, government triumphed, and the five Republican Gulf state governors and their Republican president may have earned some redemption from their Katrina follies.  But in this country, successes are remembered with less ease than failures, and the images of an overcrowded and chaotic Superdome, a National Guard brigade arriving a week late, and row upon row of toxic trailers may be too branded in the minds of voters to so easily overcome in November.

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