Heading into the closing weeks of her campaign for re-election as governor, did Linda Lingle have her "Giuliani moment" this weekend as the state was hit with a smash-mouth earthquake and a massive power outage?

What we're talking about here is the opportunity for a public official to emerge as a true leader or as some kind of goat in the face of great public trauma.

The reference, of course, is to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose personal and political lives were in shambles in the days leading up to the horrific attacks of Sept. 11. While some recent reporting has suggested that Giuliani made more mistakes than anyone realized, there's no doubt that the city and the nation recognized him at the time as an organized, calm and in-charge leader who brought at least a semblance of order to a chaotic time.

In most ways, it is unfair to compare Lingle's performance after the earthquake to Giuliani's handling of the terrorist attacks.

For starters, Lingle is not in the public relations hole Giuliani had dug for himself. Her popularity is strong and her job performance ratings among the voters are about as good as any politician could wish for.

In addition, the leadership challenge faced by Lingle, while serious, was nothing close to that faced by Giuliani in the wake of the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers.

But still, this was a moment in the spotlight for a governor in the final weeks of a campaign for re-election. Early "reviews," if that's the right word, suggest she handled herself well. With typical Lingle calm, the governor took an immediate survey of the worst earthquake damage, made telephone calls to the few media outlets in operation and then settled into her designated command chair at Civil Defense headquarters.

In police work, as well as in the newspaper world and in other high-stress occupations, there is a kind of gallows humor that kids about the "good luck" of being in the center of things when disaster strikes.

Now, no one is suggesting Lingle claims any good luck for being governor and at the center of the action when this small disaster struck Hawai'i. But there's no denying the benefits of being the person in charge when the attention of the entire state is riveted.

It didn't hurt that Lingle, by sheer chance, happened to be close to the epicenter of the earthquake on the Big Island when it struck.

Imagine that.

So, while her fellow candidates, Randy Iwase and Jim Brewer, had to cool their heels on the sidelines after a planned gubernatorial forum was canceled, Lingle jumped aboard a state helicopter and zoomed around the island to get a firsthand look at the state of things. News conferences and other events followed.

Over the next few days and weeks, there will be lots of second-guessing and after-the-fact reviews that may find fault with details of how the state handled this particular emergency. Already, there are complaints that officials should have been more active in advising residents that the earthquake did not generate a tsunami. There may come an opportunity for Lingle's opponents to make that, or other points.

But for the moment, there's this:

Being the top political dog can be a huge headache and terrible political burden when things go wrong. But when things go reasonably well, the person in charge takes center stage and everyone else has to wait in the wings and accept the fact that the spotlight can shine in only one direction at a time.

Reach Jerry Burris at jburris@honoluluadvertiser.com.