Well, then, here you go, Sen. McCain:

As the deadly storm system moved ashore almost three years ago, sending fatal floods through New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Bush was in Phoenix....It was Aug. 29, McCain's 69th birthday, and on the tarmac, Bush presented his old political rival with a cake. The two posed, holding the cake up for cameras, and within seconds, went their separate ways. The cake, melting in the 110-degree Arizona heat, was left behind, uneaten.

It's a photo op that Democrats will no doubt use as part of their campaign to portray a McCain presidency as nothing more than a third Bush term--a picture of the senator and the president, yukking it up on one of the administration's darkest days....Arriving Thursday morning, McCain was asked how he planned to distinguish himself from Bush's handling of Katrina. "Just like I do everything," he said. "They have to judge me on my record."...

Yet on the issue of New Orleans, it's still unclear how different McCain and Bush actually are. Speaking about Katrina, McCain, like many other Republicans, has trashed the administration's handling of the storm and has vowed to prevent similar catastrophes. "We can never let anything like that happen again," McCain told reporters on board his Straight Talk Express earlier this week. Still, the senator, who has visited the Lower Ninth Ward twice since the storm, has yet to tread into the far trickier debate over what to do about New Orleans now, a fight that has dragged on and on with little progress since the waters washed part of the city away.

The senator won't present his own plans for recovery, at least not today. Asked earlier this week if he thought the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt, McCain shrugged, considering the question for several seconds. "I really don't know," he finally said. "That's why I am going … We need to go back to have a conversation about what to do: rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is."

Can't just wash away all those votes. Not sure how your campaign is going to spin this into faux gold, but don't try using "let them eat cake" or "suck it up and deal." That doesn't play well for the masses.

Can't just wash away all that failure to lead, either. You weren't exactly standing up for the folks in the Gulf Coast, then or now, were you?

As Scout Prime says, distancing is hard work. While using prison labor to fill out your background shots might be visually useful, some actual work might be a better move. You could start by asking your pal Joe Lieberman when he plans on holding oversight hearings on the contractor that stuffed NOLA levees with newspaper. Since he hasn't done much of anything up to now, how about you try and get him off his ass...if you are going to use him as a photo prop for your campaign, it's the very least you could do.

And I do mean, the very least...

(YouTube via Progressive Media. H/T Atrios.)