The emerging theme is regulation, as in don't-we-need-more-of-it?    Democrats certainly think we do.   Treasury Secretary  Henry Paulson's plan for overhaul of the regulatory structure for  financial institutions gives Democrats a vested interest in disliking it,  or appearing to anyway,  on account of its birthplace -- the Bush administration.

As everyone who reads blogs or follows the Democratic presidential contest knows, one of the biggest raps on Bush-ism is the administration's penchant, not for regulation of the ecoonomy but actually  for -- cover your eyes, children -- de-regulation.  Defined as the crumpling up of government oversight powers, to the benefit of speculators and other grabby rich people.

The credit/subprime mortgage mess, matrix for the plan that Paulson delivered Monday, is the kind of mess you hope you don't have in a presidential year.  That's because seekers of high office, or those who back particular seekers,  incline to  muscle-flexing in the face of challenge.  A robust reputation for crisis-handling is supposed to strengthen an office-seeker' s credentials.

No shrinking-violet measures will do!   Shake 'em up, grab soneone by the scruff of the neck -- that's the ticket.  Regulate, regulate!    For instance,  Hillary Clinton wants to freeze home foreclosures and cap credit card interest at 20 perrcent.  Barack Obama, who believes that "government has an active role to play,"  delivered himself last weekend of a detailed proposal for, among other things,  "stabilizing macroeconomic and financial conditions for sustained growth" and "ensuring fair competition in the marketplace."  Oh, yeah?   "Sustained growth " meaning what exactly?   "Fair competition" defined as...?

Paulson himself, of course, is on a regulatory roll.  Some things clearly need shaking up. Which things?  To what degreee?  With what consequences for general prosperity and the encouragement of risk-taking and innovation?

The laying down of a few markers would seem at this early stage an essential idea.  This marker, for instance:  Politicians should watch their demonstrated tendency to do too much rather than too little.   It's the nature of political poker.  You see  a remedial plan, and you raise.  Where's the credit, after all, in merely acceding to someone else's plan?

A second marker: Regulation is going to hurt as well as help.   Government regulation tells people what they can't, as opposed to shouldn't,. do.  What if  government gets it wrong?   What if some of the things that investors aren't,  according to regulatory law, supposed to do,  in fact need doing for the economy"s general advantage, not just the advantage of the stock villains and buffoons the media see as standing for Wall Street?

A third marker: Where does the government -- any government -- get the competence to figure out the future: what will work, what won't, and why?  It was the French government, one mustn't forget, that came up with the priceless notion of defending the motherland through erecting an impenetrable line of forts the Nazis overwhelmed by simply outflanking them.   Risk-takers, not deskbound bureaucrats,  understand, and sway, the future.

If men were angels, Madison noted, we wouldn't need government.  Well, men aren't angels.  Charlatans and sharpers, not to mention fools, walk among us.  The laissez-faire approach to economics, however commendable as pure economics (and it's pretty commendable in that sense),  won't work in a world populated by the descendants of Adam and Eve. By people, in other words.    Five minutes after the most  idealistic spirits in the world instituted economic and political anarchy, we'd all be cutting each other's throats.

So: government,  yes.  But no more of it than we absolutely have to  have to get by.   The best formula for moving the economy back on track and keeping it there in this challenging time  is one that celebrates freedom and innovation and the taking of risks and the reaping of rewards,   as opposed to a formuila that celebrates bureaucratic suffocation and stultification.

aDon't you agree, Sen. Obama?   Sen. Clinton?  Ah,  you don't entirely?   Well  -- maybe that's the "conversation" we all should be having.right now, at top volume.

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