Campaign restart, the mud after the storm

America's biggest, most important city is seriously wounded, and millions more along the Eastern Seaboard are still wallowing, dazed, in the soggy filth left behind by this week's superstorm.

But the two men running for president have decided the respectful pause is over.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were back on the stump Thursday, peddling the mixture of distortions, nose-stretchers, preening and pandering that passes for serious political discourse in modern America.

The last few days, though, did provide insights into the art of capitalizing politically on a disaster.

It was easiest for Barack Obama. All he had to do was return to his day job for awhile and, in the words of Republican heavyweight Jeb Bush, be "symbolic counsellor-in-chief."

For three days, Obama was visibly in charge, taking briefings and being reassuring, and then, after the deluge, inspecting damage and promising relief.

For Romney, who doesn't have a day job, it was more difficult.

For a few days, he transformed his rallies into food drives, posing for cameras with donated relief supplies and tinned goods. (The American Red Cross, however, said it preferred cash, but how do you turn internet credit card pledges into a photo op?)

Meanwhile, one of Romney's most important campaigners and surrogates decided it was no longer in his political interest to be seen at the candidate's side.

Chris Christie, the Republican governor of the particularly stricken state of New Jersey, suddenly became Obama's new best friend, inspecting damage with him, embracing him, and praising him on television: "I cannot thank the president enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state."

Fox News Channel anchor Steve Doocy tried on Tuesday to prod Christie back onto the pro-Romney team, but the famously blunt governor wasn't interested.

After pointing out Christie has been an important Romney surrogate in recent weeks and months, Doocy asked whether there's "any possibility that Gov. Romney may go to New Jersey to tour some of the damage with you?"

Replied Christie: "I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested ... if you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me."

Nor, he might have added, does Doocy understand the brutal logic of political self-interest: New Jersey leans strongly toward Obama anyway, its voters desperately need federal aid money, Mitt Romney is on record saying that the federal emergency agency, FEMA, should be chopped down or privatized, and Christie himself probably wants to be re-elected next year.

Today, though, both presidential candidates seemed to want to minimize references to Sandy and its aftermath. Though it is clearly having an effect on the campaign.

At a rally in Virginia, Romney asked people to send the Red Cross or Salvation Army a donation ("We love those in need"), and moved on.

In Wisconsin, meanwhile, Obama used Sandy to riff on his rather aspirational united-America theme: "There are no Democrats or Republicans during a storm, there are just fellow Americans."

Righto.

A few minutes later, Obama was implicitly comparing the destructiveness of the storm to the economic policies of past Republican administrations.