Sandy's approach toward the East Coast on Monday brought out a kind of solidarity. We like to pretend that we rally together. TV news coverage moved from blanket polling to rain and wind analysis. After the last two years of a presidential campaign, that came as a relief.
But the Kumbaya stage won't last long. Politics is an undeniable aspect of any catastrophe. In a nation where the distribution of power flows from the president down, but the response to a disaster flows from a mayor up, there is bound to be friction in between. Hurricane Katrina pitted a Republican White House against a governor and mayor of a different party.
The BP oil spill exposed the political animosity between a Democratic White House and five Republican governors who were unhappy with the response.
Sandy will follow that trajectory. There's a presidential election in its path. While the campaigns were suspended Monday, the desire to win has not.
What makes Sandy politically significant isn't just that President Barack Obama will be judged by the response; it's also that Mitt Romney, who has endorsed the idea of disbanding FEMA and returning its duties to the states, has good reason to keep quiet.
With a close presidential election just a week away, Sandy introduced more uncertainty. The Eastern seaboard, though mostly Democratic, includes a few swing states, plus tight House and Senate races.
Candidates' fate may turn on a ground game, and no one predicted that the ground might filled with fallen branches.
Kayyem writes for The Boston Globe. She previously served as a homeland security official for the Obama administration. Her email address is jkayyem@globe.com.