I've been running into a lot of worried Obama supporters in the past few weeks. Maybe the tightness of the race shouldn't be a surprise, given the race factor and the hardball politics that both campaigns are indulging in. But the depression among the Obama troops is obvious. Some have become less excited about Obama as the nominee. Now it's McCain supporters who have the enthusiasm.

Oh, come on, folks. It's time to rekindle the flame.

The debates probably won't do it for us; McCain's likely to come off looking strong, and Obama will look, well, professorial. But with the Wall Street crisis, George Bush and his administration have just handed us a reason to get that fire back. They want to force Henry Paulson's Big Bailout Plan down our throats. Congress must act now. We must have a clean plan. No questions. No changes.

It's no easy thing, being a citizen and wading through all this. "Unregulated derivative contracts." "Credit default swaps." "Mortgage-related securities." "Troubled asset relief." The mind breaks down. But a report on NPR's Morning Edition on Tuesday got my attention.

Adam Davidson, who's been putting the complexities into perspective for Morning Edition, had interviewed Yale law professor Jonathan Macey about the Paulson Plan. And Macey, reported Adamson, called the plan "the largest transfer of power from Congress to the administration that he has ever seen. More than the Patriot Act. More than the War Powers Act."

Here's how a New York Times editorial describes the plan: It would give the Secretary of the Treasury "the authority to buy any assets from any financial institution at any price that he deemed necessary." And, says the Times, the plan "asserts that neither the courts nor any administrative agency would be allowed to question or review those decisions."

Under the Paulson Plan, taxpayers will provide $700 billion -or more! -to bail out the struggling financial sector. If we don't do it, we're told, the nation's financial system could collapse, and everybody - consumers, stockholders, homeowners - will suffer.

This from a lame-duck administration determined to do all the damage it can do in the short time left to it.

The Wall Street crisis, said a Sunday Times editorial, "is the result of a willful and systematic failure by the government to regulate and monitor the activities of bankers, lenders, hedge funds, insurers, and other market players." And that failure, said the Times, "was grounded in the Bush administration's magical belief that the market, with its invisible hand, works best when it is left alone to self regulate and self correct."

Government isn't completely to blame. Greed, stupidity, the seemingly low risk of high-risk decisions, the increasing complexity of financial instruments: all of these played a role. But government ought to help protect us from the effects of greed, stupidity, and risk, not protect the greedy and the stupid.

John McCain is talking tough now, saying that Wall Street needs more oversight. But his philosophy, like George Bush's, is one of less regulation, less oversight.

"For all his fiery calls last week for a Wall Street crackdown," the Times' Frank Rich wrote on Sunday, "McCain opposed the very regulations that might have helped avert the current catastrophe." And McCain supported a 1999 law "that revoked the New Deal reforms intended to prevent commercial banks, insurance companies, and investment banks from mingling their businesses."

The pre-campaign McCain was applauding deregulation of the financial industry, suggesting, even, that it should serve as a model for health care in the US.

This kind of stuffis the reason we need change, not only in the presidency, but in an approach to governing - in the view of the role of government. We would have a chance at that change in an Obama administration. From John McCain, we'd get much more of what we're getting now.