Seldom, if ever, has the American economy gone through a week like the one just passed.

It began with a $1.2 trillion loss on Wall Street as stocks dropped 8 percent in a single day. It ended with Congress passing and President George W. Bush signing a $700 billion financial market rescue bill that hardly anyone understands.

In between, the stock market recovered most of its Monday loss, but the American economy slid further into recession. Two major U.S. banks fought over the remains of a third, the government reported that 159,000 Americans lost their jobs last month and the governor of California — which, if it were a country, would have the seventh-largest economy in the world — is shopping for a $7 billion loan. And all of this took place against the backdrop of a presidential election that is just a month away.

In a normal week, any one of these stories would have dominated the news. In the week just passed, they fell one after another, like cluster bombs in a shock-and-awe campaign. And there was no place to hide.

That didn't stop 228 members of the House of Representatives from trying to find one. They voted "no" on the first iteration of the financial rescue plan negotiated by the Bush administration and congressional leaders. That sent the plan down to defeat on Monday, leading to a 778-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average and a further choking of the credit markets.

Cooler heads prevailed in the Senate. The upper chamber reconfigured the package to include a 10-year, $150 billion package of tax cuts and a temporary increase in federal bank deposit insurance limits. The good news: Middle-class taxpayers who could get clobbered by the alternative minimum tax got a renewed waiver. The bad news: Special interests (among them owners of auto race tracks, the rum industry, the woolen industry and — incredibly — the wooden-arrows-for-children industry) got tax breaks.

In the meantime, House members who voted "no" were hearing from businesses back home that they couldn't get credit. They were learning that the $700 billion is largely an accounting figure, not an actual immediate cash payout. And they were realizing that the psychological effects of not passing the bill would create dire cash-flow problems for all businesses and individuals, whether on Wall Street, Main Street or Chouteau Avenue.

Three dozen House members changed their minds, and early Friday afternoon, by a 263-171 vote, the House concurred with the Senate bill — just in time for them to catch planes home to campaign.

And not a moment too soon. Fundamentally, the economy runs on credit, and credit runs on confidence. The credit crisis that started with subprime mortgage loans, and escalated with the Ponzi-like stacking of opaque financial derivatives atop those loans, had undermined that confidence.

Only Washington could restore it, and by playing politics with the rescue plan, Congress failed in its responsibilities. Americans deserved straight answers on complicated questions, not pandering.

Fortunately, grown-ups, including Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, stepped in. So did Republican candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona, although McCain's bona fides as a born-again regulator remain highly suspect.

Both men now have an obligation to soothe the nation's jangled nerves. Wall Street and Washington may be able to settle the fight between Wells Fargo Bank and Citigroup for control of Wachovia. And the federal government will have to rescue — of all people — the one-time action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of cash-strapped California.

But the nation as a whole is looking to Obama and McCain for reassurance, not platitudes, sound bites or empty theatrical gestures. Back on that overworked synecdoche called Main Street, Americans want to know things are going to calm down, that the country will play fair with them, that their jobs and families will be safe, that the bailout won't leave them holding the bag for fat cats.

The candidate who can assure them of that will win. And should.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH.