He was planning to visit on Monday all along, Jay Carney assured the press today, just, er, as soon as his campaign event in Ohio was over. Now the event is canceled and he’ll fly to Louisiana earlier. This is the same guy who spent the day that Isaac was pounding Louisiana out on the trail in Iowa, with a short break in the afternoon for a jaunty chat session on Reddit. He obviously doesn’t care at all about the optics of this, probably because he knows the media’s too busy parsing Republican mentions of “golf” for hidden racial subtexts to cover his indifference.

Nice job by Romney in forcing him to make a move.

President Barack Obama was today forced to announce he will fly to storm-hit Louisiana on Monday – hours after Mitt Romney beat him to the punch by deciding to head there this afternoon.

After it emerged that Obama was still taking time to fit in a campaign stop in Cleveland, Ohio before checking out how clean-up operations are proceeding in the Bayou state, the Obama campaign abruptly cancelled that event.

‘In light of the President’s travel to Louisiana to meet with local officials and view ongoing response and recovery efforts to Hurricane Isaac, President Obama will no longer travel to Cleveland, Ohio on Monday, September 3,’ the campaign said in a terse statement.

You can imagine the gritted teeth in the Oval Office and Chicago HQ as they scratched off that precious Ohio visit because O had to attend to something as mundane as his disaster relief. Here’s the real question: Why wasn’t he, or isn’t he, scheduled to visit tomorrow? He deserves a pass on visiting earlier this week while the storm was still there, since it would have exposed him to needless risk and his security precautions would have created an extra logistical headache for local government. I’m willing to give him a pass on visiting today too because he’s meeting with troops at Fort Bliss to commemorate the second anniversary of the end of combat in Iraq. What about Saturday, though? There’s nothing on his schedule as of this writing. Any logistical reason to hold off until Monday — more local police on duty, perhaps — or did he just not feel like losing his weekend? I’m sure there are golf courses in Louisiana. *Dog whistle!*