Gustav came ashore in Louisiana as a diminished Category 2 hurricane, but it's a fat Category 5 gift to the GOP. Let us count the ways.

Instead of spending Labor Day weekend shaking hands in some Ohio hardware store, the storm has given Sen. John McCain a golden take-charge opportunity. He and running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made plans to fly to the Gulf Coast where presumably they will hug evacuees and serve food at shelters. "Message: We care," as President Bush's father once said, in a much different context.

McCain also scrapped Monday's convention schedule, freeing delegates to return to their states where they, too, can comfort the afflicted. Katrina? That was then. This is now.

Cable TV, naturally, is covering the metero-political story nonstop. Gustav may not be the "Mother of All Storms," as the hyperbolic Drudge Report headlined yesterday, but in this election season it's the Mother of Free Media events. Barack Obama e-mailed his supporters, asking them to donate to the Red Cross, but on TV, it's the Republicans who have morphed into our national caregivers.

Gustav's biggest gift, however, is playing out far from the Gulf Coast. By virtually monopolizing news coverage, it's taken attention off the personal life of the governor of Alaska, whose family history is turning out to have more twists and turns than The Forsyte Saga.

For 24 hours, as Gustav swirled north across the Gulf of Mexico, the blogosphere swirled with maternity rumors. Was the governor really the mother of the Palin's fifth child, a five-month-old boy, or was it their 17-year-old daughter, Bristol?

The initial speculation on Daily Kos got a lift from Slog. By Sunday evening, there were hundreds of Google citations. The story edged perilously close to the mainstream media with a sensible observation by center-right blogger Andrew Sullivan:

Is raising questions about the Palin pregnancy a smear campaign? Here's why it's not. The circumstantial evidence for weirdness around this pregnancy is so great that legitimate questions arise — questions anyone with common sense would ask. The answers to those questions can easily be provided. This is an easier call than the "cross in the dirt" story, which will never be resolved one way or another. The McCain-Palin campaign can resolve this now with medical records, as are mandated for presidential candidates anyway.

The job of a press is to ask questions which have a basis in fact ... I have claimed nothing. I am asking the McCain campaign to resolve a factual question which they must already have covered in the vetting process. After all, this baby was a centerpiece of the public case for Palin made by the Republicans. They made it an issue — and therefore it is legitimate to ask questions about it. That's all.

Deafening silence from the McCain campaign.

Gustav, fortunately, gave McCain, his vice presidential choice, and campaign strategists time to huddle up and call a new play. As Gustav was battering New Orleans levees midday Monday, the campaign announced that the rumor mongers had gotten the subject right but the tense wrong, Bristol wasn't a mom. She's going to be a mom.

Well, that's settled. In the days ahead, as Gustav diminishes to a tropical depression, pouring rain into the Ohio Valley, the nation's attention can give poor Bristol a rest and refocus on other Palinesque issues: Did the governor unlawfully influence the firing of her state trooper brother-in-law after his divorce from her sister? Was the governor in favor of the Bridge-to-Nowhere before she was against it? Was the governor a pal of indicted Senator Ted Stevens before she was against him? Is Metternich's biography the governor's favorite summer beach read?

Galsworthy died too soon.