The problem is that people in the red states, or states which at least tend less democratic, are more likely to have state policies in place which, to be absolutely blunt, should be mostly responsible for their own disaster relief. Remember, in Katrina, the jackass mayor or New Orleans and the dimwit governor of Louisiana had little to no contingency plans, and had to rely 100% on FEMA, which by definition is supposed to be slower than state and regional responses.
However, this allowed the media to run with the ball to discredit Bush. This time around, the media is going to bend over backwards to HIGHLIGHT FEMA, even though its response will most probably be on the same scale as it did in Katrina. Since most of the affected states are blue states, there is still going to be a larger dependency on FEMA; however, FEMA has the relative home field advantage with Sandy because they will take less time to travel to the affected areas. As an aside, or more as a comparison, during the Joplin MO disaster a couple years ago, FEMA moved proportionately as slowly during that disaster as they did 5 years previously in Katrina. But since Missouri was a relative red state, they had state-provided contingency plans in place that reduced the urgency of FEMA resources; hence, FEMA was hailed a major Obama success.
So I predict that FEMA will be hailed as a BRILLIANT success, and that Obama will be hailed as its master architect of the response to Sandy. And guess what? Obama was looking to run against Bush; now it looks as if the press will have the opportunity to portray this as an Obama victory against Bush. And Benghazi? Fugedaboudit....