This morning I was reading some of the articles dealing with Gustav’s political fallout: the more daring articles what predict that Gustav will be a boon for McCain, and the useless articles pointing out that Gustav can be good – or bad – for McCain.

While some of the arguments writers use to justify their conclusions do make sense, I am all the speculation. Some of the people now pretending to know exactly what’s going to happen as a result of a hurricane, are essentially the same people who predicted that McCain will pick Romney or that Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. These are the same people who assessed wrongly the bounce Obama was supposed to get from the Democratic convention, etc.

With all due respect to my fellow journalists and columnists, I think if this last year has proved anything, it is that political predictions under such unique circumstances are no more accurate than determinations made by coin toss. (In fact, they are less accurate. A coin toss gives you a 50% chance of being right).

Consider that in a July 31 article, Slate’s well-informed John Dickerson detailed the drawbacks Bush’s appearance at the convention.  Bush, of course, will not be appearing at the convention. Consider, too, that Nate Silver, knew
on August 20 that Obama would name his VP the next day. Biden’s name was finally released days later at 3 a.m.

Both Dickerson and Silver predict Gustav will do good things for McCain.

As Mark Blumenthal wrote,

[L]ike it or not, we really won’t have a sense of what these shifts mean — and what they portend for the rest of the campaign — until the Republican convention ends and the dust starts to settle in about 10 days.

Same goes for the question of whether McCain will benefit from Gustav.