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A FINANCIAL crisis on the scale of the one unfolding on Wall Street would be terrible at any juncture. But the timing of this one is astonishingly bad. In one corner is a president with just over a hundred days left to serve, who many people believe is among the most calamitous ever to occupy the White House. In the other corner is Congress, where a third of the Senate and the whole of the House face re-election in exactly one month’s time. Flickering in and out of the fray are the two presidential candidates, whose campaigns have become the playthings of forces over which they have no control. If ever there were a recipe for poor political leadership, this is it.

The malign coincidence of crash and election reinforces the difficulties. Political weakness makes it hard to get to grips with a reeling economy, and the economic crisis disrupts the process of choosing a new president. Most obviously, it is distracting attention from the contest. At a time when voters ought to be weighing up the candidates’ characters, records and policies, the airwaves are saturated with the grim news from the world’s banks and bourses. Even worse, the crisis makes a mockery of many of the campaign promises laboriously crafted in focus groups and policy workshops, and methodically laid out on the stump and via the internet.

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Even before the cost of bail-outs is considered, the budget deficit for the current fiscal year is estimated at slightly over $400 billion, already about 3% of GDP. If America were part of the EU, it would be facing trouble for breaching the Maastricht guidelines; and if it moves into full-blown recession next year’s deficit will be a lot worse. Even though the full $700 billion cost of the proposed bail-out would be spread over several years, and the offsetting value of the loans the government intends to buy up will increase if the bail-out works, the current crisis is likely to drive a large hole through a budget that already looks stretched. Deficits do, and ought to, rise in recessions; but if they start out high and are coupled with promises of expensive tax cuts and spending boosts, the long-term consequences for the public finances are alarming.

This week we publish a special 20-page briefing looking at the pledges the two presidential candidates have made; we also have a survey of economists examining their schemes—(see article). Both men are exposed to a budget crunch (as indeed are parties elsewhere, such as Britain’s Tories—see article). John McCain has the bigger tax cuts, but an empty Treasury may hurt Barack Obama more because he has proposed a lot more on the spending side. He has more promises that may have to be broken if there is no money.

To many voters, Mr Obama’s most attractive single policy is that he is committed to introducing universal health coverage, ending the disgraceful situation whereby some 46m Americans have no health cover and get little or no health care until they end up in an emergency room. On top of that, tens of millions more have health cover that is restricted or inadequate, and an even larger number fear that they could fall into one or other of these categories should they lose their jobs and the health insurance that goes with them.

Fixing health care is a laudable aim, but even on Mr Obama’s own reckoning, it will cost some $50 billion-65 billion a year, and most analysts think that the true price would be a lot more. Mr Obama also promises investment in alternative energy, affordable university tuition, a big push to upgrade America’s crumbling infrastructure and much else. He has admitted, under questioning, that the state of the economy means that some of these promises will have to be “delayed”. He has been, unsurprisingly, reluctant to say which ones.

Mr McCain’s problems are rather different. He has made fewer economic promises than Mr Obama has, but the ones he has made, mainly to business in the shape of slashing corporate taxes from 35% to 25%, and allowing immediate write-offs of lots of equipment, are very expensive. One reason why our polled economists come out so heavily against Mr McCain is because the deficit would rise dramatically under his plan. Against that, few people, including probably Mr McCain himself, have ever believed that he would get his tax cuts through a Democrat-controlled Congress. To that extent at least, the Republican, who once used to be a fiscal conservative, has less to lose in the crunch. But that is hardly a flattering yardstick.

The candidates’ economic plans are still a useful guide to their very different political philosophies. But when it comes to paying for it all, neither is offering much straight talk.

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