The two most powerful ones — Bush and Cheney — sure ain’t here.
My gut feeling: Gustav, as worried as we all are, is more cover than reason for the absence of the wrong-track twins.
There’s talk of somehow altering the convention should things turn really sour, either making it a telethon of sorts or have convention goers stuff ration kits and such. Of the two, a telethon probably makes the most sense, if the worst (i.e., “the same”) visuals. Having seen how chaotic it is to organize these people when months of planning has gone into it, I’d sort of hate to see what they look like on the fly.