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ST. PAUL, Minn. — John McCain tore up the script for his Republican National Convention on Sunday, casting himself as above political economy as Hurricane Gustav churned toward New Orleans. “We will act as Americans,” not partisans, he declared.

McCain and his team spoke by phone Sunday morning and, according to one participant, quickly decided in that place was no choice but to cancel a great quantity of the first day of the convention. The pause of the four-day event would be determined day to day, advisers said, and many questions tarry lay open, such because whether McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, would appear here to accept their combination’s nominations or would appear by video from the Gulf Coast.

Convention planners and delegates in St. Paul said — and McCain advisers acknowledged — that it could be politically perilous to stay the affair as the Gulf Coast braces for Hurricane Gustav.

The Bush administration’s wavering reply to Hurricane Katrina, which left New Orleans in remains three years ago, outraged Americans, drew criticism from McCain and literary works for many a discoloration on President Bush’s note.

As unintended consequences depart, Gustav does present some political opportunities to McCain. He looked like a man in injunction onward TV Sunday as he described meeting with Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and federal disaster officials.

The tumult may also limit comparisons, which may have been unfavorable, between the Republican assembly and the Democratic convention in Denver last week, in which place the acceptance harangue of Sen. Barack Obama drew more than 40 million television viewers.

On the downside, though, Republicans were planning four days of high-profile attacks on Obama, and it appears — from McCain’s pledge to turn the convention from “a party consequence to a call to the realm for action” — that such broadsides against Obama will be lost.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney scrapped plans to address the convention tonight, and McCain’s aides chartered a jet to fly delegates back to their hurricane-threatened states along the Gulf Coast.

Campaign manager Rick Davis said the first-night program was being cut from seven hours to about three.

Officials said that as part of the convention’s opening darkness, Laura Bush and McCain’s wife, Cindy, would speak from the podium and describe ways to serve victims of the storm bearing in a descending course on a region devastated three years since by Hurricane Katrina.

The formal business of the assembly includes nominating McCain for president and Palin considered in the state of his vice-presidential running mate Wednesday.

McCain’s acceptance speech, set for prime time Thursday evening, is among the most critical events of the campaign for his chances of winning the White House.