Things look pretty bad for McCain right now. The left has been pushing the McCain=Bush meme for so long that a lot of people have come to accept it through osmosis.

And now that there's been an "economic meldown," there's a huge "rescue plan" being pushed by Bush. The Democrats are jumping all over each other trying to make political hay out of it. (Adrianna Huffington's "The Bailout Plan: Welcome to Economic Shock and Awe" from this morning is typical.)

And so far, McCain seems to be going along with it (although not so loudly as to be irreversibly loud).

Far be it from me to offer advice that wouldn't be heeded. But I can reflect on what other people are saying, and I think Newt Gingrich got it right last night when he said that McCain should go against Bush on this one. Show he is in fact real maverick he's always claimed to be.

He has consistently condemned pork, and if this isn't pork, then what is?

Here's Thomas Sowell:

Whenever there is a lot of the taxpayers' money around, politicians are going to find ways to spend it that will increase their chances of getting re-elected by giving goodies to voters.

The longer it takes Congress to pass the bailout bill, the more of those goodies are going to find their way into the legislation. Speed is important, not just to protect the financial markets but to protect the taxpayers from having more of their hard-earned money squandered by politicians.

Regardless of what Barack Obama or John McCain may say they are going to do as president, after a trillion dollars has been taken off the top there is going to be a lot less left in the federal treasury for them to do anything with.

Already Senator Christopher Dodd is talking about extending the bailout from the financial firms to homeowners facing mortgage foreclosures-- as if the point of all this is to play Santa Claus.

bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.

People usually stop making ill-advised decisions when they are forced to face the consequences of those decisions, not when politicians come to their rescue and make the taxpayers pay for decisions that the taxpayers had nothing to do with.

The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been "shilling" for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.

As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie "fundamentally strong" and said there is no need for "panicking" about them. But now that the chickens have come home to roost, Senator Dodd wants to be sure to get some goodies from the rescue legislation to pass out to people likely to vote for him.

Obama=Bush! Maybe that's "change" -- but I don't know how well it will go over with Obama supporters.

The reason this makes so much sense is that there's so little time. Neither the voters nor the politicians will be able to understand (much less reflect on) all of the infinite permutations of 700 billion dollars worth of pork, and process that intelligently during the next few weeks while there's an election on. (I do not mean to sound condescending; I can't process it either.) When voters are confused, they tend to proceed with caution.

So I think McCain taking a true-to-his-character, anti-pork, maverick stance works for a variety of reasons.

Hell, it might even be the right thing to do.

(Ask me when I've had time to process the numbers, in a year or so....)

MORE: Megan McArdle has a very sensible post which attempts to answer an excellent question; How close was the financial system to melting down? Conclusion: Consider that the Great Depression came upon a society much less dependent on unsecured credit than we are. Then count your lucky stars that our financial officials are moderately competent.

How likely was this doomsday scenario? No way to know. But it was possible. That's quite scary enough. That it was scary is the whole problem. It's scary but economically scary, not war scary. This favors the Democratic Party, and unfortunately, their candidate is (IMO) an ardent socialist.

McCain has to stop him -- even if it means opposing Bush now at the risk of making the economy wait a month. I'm no economist, but I think hasty solutions have a poor enough track record.

The timing is not merely bad, it's f*cking insanely bad.

(Believe it or not, I'm actually sorry for the country.)

MORE: These poll results cheered me a bit:

This is not to say they agree with me (or Gingrich -- a guy I generally can't stand, BTW), but it's nice to know I'm not alone in my priorities.

Electing a socialist now would throw gasoline on the fire.

MORE: Don't miss "Catastrophic apocalyptic armageddon!
Or something." from Rachel Lucas. (Unless I'm reading her wrong, she seems to like Gingrich's idea.)

At the risk of displaying my ignorance, I do think the economy is beyond our immediate control.

Unlike the election.

MORE: Here's the view of an economist I trust, Arnold Kling:

The risks of enacting the plan are far worse than the risks of doing nothing.