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Looking backward, it's clear that the Bush administration needed a more comprehensive approach. The last time the financial system imploded, in the 1930s, the Franklin Roosevelt administration combined government recapitalization with tough regulation. But the government-loathing Bush administration has pumped in capital only in fits and starts, and remains allergic to regulation.
Looking forward, the next administration will need to do the job properly. If the next president is John McCain, one of his top financial advisers is former senator Phil Gramm of Texas, a key architect of the extreme financial deregulation that created this mess.
Barack Obama might be more like Roosevelt. Indeed, if Obama does a more effective job of connecting the dots between Republican ideology and the current financial crash, it might even save his faltering campaign.
Robert Kuttner's new book is "Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency.
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