Ramesh raises a point, and I’ll echo a lot of what Kathryn says. I was a bit more of a supporter of the rescue/bailout, but I was more convinced of the importance of the goal — get the toxic assets off the books of financial institutions so they can get past this crisis as quickly as possible, with as little collateral damage as possible — than the bill’s method of achieving that goal. (There are many legitimate objections, but most notably the legislation is a giant leap of faith on the decision-making of the next Treasury Secretary.)

Also note that I still thought that McCain could have voted “no” by the time it got to the Senate floor not because he opposed the rescue/bailout itself but to register his disapproval of how the Senate had treated what was called “emergency” legislation as another Christmas tree for each member to put an “ornament” of pork or legislative pet projects in it. I think “No, I’m not going to sign off on this farce until you guys grow up” is a perfectly legitimate position. Ramesh might characterize that as assuming that making a point about the Senate’s pork-o-mania is more important than rescuing the economy. But that assumes that the bill was necessary for rescuing the economy, and I think a lot of people are less certain of that than they were a few weeks ago…