Put Country First

What the presidential candidates ought to be talking about

IN ORDINARY times, with just over three weeks before Election Day, no one would expect the presidential candidates to think of anything but maximizing their political advantage. These are not ordinary times.

The financial crisis has entered uncharted and frightening territory. The value of almost everything -- houses, stocks, retirement funds -- seems to have plunged to levels that can't be easily explained, resisting one "fix" after another. More alarming, the credit freeze has resisted all remedies attempted so far. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have labored stoutly to contain the crisis, prescribing radical prescriptions without regard to past ideology or politics, and President Bush has backed them at every step. But Mr. Bush is so unpopular that his words of reassurance do not soothe, and Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are locked in an increasingly poisonous campaign. The resulting leadership vacuum exacerbates the sense of confusion. This would be a fine time for the candidates to really put country first.

What would that mean in practice? No one expects the candidates to propose 10-point plans guaranteed to fix the problem. Events are moving too swiftly, and neither Mr. McCain nor Mr. Obama can substitute themselves for the officeholders now in charge. But it would be reassuring if they acknowledged through their behavior that they know something fundamental is going on. In the face of crisis, both have hewed largely to their scripts as written, as if nothing has changed and the priorities they formulated a year ago remain viable today. There is something disturbingly disconnected about these responses, which assume, incorrectly, that the next president will not have to make painful trade-offs. Just to toss away those scripts would help confirm their understanding of a new reality.

The economic collapse raises broad questions that the candidates might grapple with. To what extent should the United States continue to depend on foreign credit to prop up the economy, and how do the candidates propose to reduce this reliance or to respond if foreign investors balk? If the era of easy credit is over, how would the candidates find the right balance between over-intrusive regulation that stifles investment and innovation and the anything-goes, market-knows-best mentality the current crisis is blamed on? Like it or not, the U.S. government that one of them will lead will be a principal owner of a sizable share of the U.S. economy. What are the implications of that? What principles will guide them as they buy, manage and sell these assets?

We think that most Americans would not be troubled to hear the candidates admit that they don't have all the answers, if they were doing their best to learn -- to solicit advice and wisdom from the smartest people around, in academia and business, in the United States and beyond. Most Americans also would be relieved if the candidates were not seeking tit-for-tat advantage from the crisis but were cooperating with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke to ease the panic. Such an apolitical stance might even prove politically wise.