If the Democrats and their allies in the media have their way, Aug. 29 will become another Sept. 11.

This left-leaning alliance isn’t there yet, in terms of making the sale to the country – Hurricane Katrina as the domestic doppelganger of Sept. 11 – but they are working on it.

And so Republicans have no choice, of course, but to play the Katrina blame game, too. Which is to say, Katrina is now “in play” as a political football. On the whole, that’s a good thing, because just as Sept. 11 proved this is a dangerous world of terrorism, Katrina, which hit a year ago Tuesday, proved the natural world also is deadly dangerous.

There’s no point in decrying such politicization, because, as Aristotle explained 2,500 years ago, men – women, too – are political animals. If it has to do with our human relationships, it’s political. The challenge is to turn politics into a useful exercise. In the case of disasters, that means paying decent respect to the dead, but, even more important, it means taking steps to minimize death and suffering in the future.

When Katrina hit, it was easy enough to place blame at the national level: The Federal Emergency Management Agency and, by extension, the White House, took it in the neck. Whenever the national media cover a story – remember all those cable news anchors emoting for the camera? – it becomes a federal case, literally.

This “nationalizing” or “federalizing” process might be inevitable in the era of instant communications, but it has the inadvertent effect of taking state and local officials out of the picture – and thus mostly off the hook.

The images of Bush seeming Katrina-clueless – looking out his Air Force One window, praising FEMA Director Michael Brown – were burned into the public mind through repetition. And that media overshadowing was good news for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who were most responsible for the disaster-reaction effort – and largely derelict in fulfilling their duties.

At the same time, that overshadowing unfairly obscured the real success of other state officials, such as Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who were far more effective at providing relief.

A year later, the Democrats and many reporters have settled on a “talking point”: Katrina proves everything we need to know about Bush. And for his part, W. has basically accepted the critique: He pledges to do “more” – more than the $110 billion the federal government has already committed.

What’s really needed is less groveling and money-shoveling and more politicking. All Americans should be asking, for example, “What is the proper role of state and local government in disasters?” And, as a follow-up, “What should the rest of us do if a foolish local official – such as Nagin – is re-elected in the wake of a disaster?”

And what of populations in regions that either won’t – or can’t – take responsibility for minimizing the downside? Is it possible, in effect, to raise the premium of collective public “insurance” for future disaster relief? Or to lower the premium for those willing to take effective risk-reduction action?

And the biggest overall question about disasters: What to do about the reality that some geographical areas are more disaster-prone than others? Do we want to commit to endless streams of no-questions-asked subsidies directed toward, for example, the Gulf Coast? And how should we think about rare mega-events, such as a possible magnitude-10 earthquake in Los Angeles?

The point here is not to be noncompassionate in the face of liberal political footballing. We are all in this together, as a country, as we face the threats of Katrina-like disaster and Sept. 11-type foreign attack.

Precisely because the stakes are so high, we should have an argument in which we use our heads as well as our hearts. Compassion after the fact is great, but forethought is even better.