I’m in the airport waiting for my flight, Twin Cities bound.

Meanwhile, the people of New Orleans wait in highways, train stations, and bus depots destined for Dallas, Nashville, and Northern Mississippi.

“Get your butts out of New Orleans now.” I hear Mayor Ray Nagin say on the terminal TV tuned to CNN. “Anyone who decides to stay, I’ll say it like I said before Katrina: make sure you have an axe, because you will be carving your way, or busting you way out of your attic to get on your roof with the waters that you will be surrounded with in this event.”

I think of these Louisianans leaving their homes in hordes, some with their life possessions in garbage bags, not wondering McCain or Obama, but Oklahoma or Missouri.

*Commercial Break* Merrill Lynch- Circuit City- Zyrtec only at Walgreens.

I look across my terminal seat, staring at a man with a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel spread across his face. The soon-to-be infamous picture of Russian tanks convoying through that small Georgian town stares back at me.

I think of those Georgians and I think of those Russians. I think of that teary eyed child staring out her kitchen window, wondering at the magnificence and power of those tanks, and the young soldiers inside the tanks sharing that same thought. American elections mean little to these people.  

*The paper closes.*Smart Savings for Back to School, a Verizon advertisement insists.  

The Republican National Convention begins tomorrow. That’s why I’m here. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal debate in headlines over McCain’s choice for Vice President and speculate what it could mean.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney do not plan to attend tomorrow’s opening day at the RNC like originally planned, they’ll have to focus on the southern states. Gustav cannot be another Katrina.

John McCain will be in Mississippi today surveying storm preparations. He has suggested the tone of the RNC may be quite different with a national disaster looming on the horizon.

I’m in the plane now. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. I’m feeling way too fortunate. I’m excited to report and watch political history unwrap this week, but at the end of the day countries will be war-torn, and families will be torn from their home. And I’ll remember how important it is to remember why we’re voting in the first place.