Mr. McCain needs to be the maverick again, and be against having the same regulators and politicians that helped create this mess be the ones to self-servingly proclaim to be fixing it.

Second, McCain needs to be clear that this problem is going to be with us for a while, and handled wrong (and, sadly, maybe even if handled right), it could be huge. We can learn from sectors of the economy that are just fine thank you, like small community banks. And we need a McCain plan that, unlike the “Wall Street” Treasury plan’s top-down attempt to value the leveraged maze of complicated securities based on mortgages, is a “Main St”, bottom up, solution that refinances and properly values the underlying securities that are causing such uncertainty all the way up the chain. Voting for the Treasury plan may have been necessary in extremis, but markets are confirming that it’s just another band aid that doesn’t yet really fix the problem.

That leads to the third point Sen. McCain should make: that we are at the time of a defining choice. Under the wrong leadership, taxpayer liabilities could swell, not just through tax and spend policies, but as the post-bailout line forms of all those businesses, municipalities, and even states hold out the tin cup for their shot at a federal bailout.

Here is the difference McCain needs to emphasize: If we get an administration which continues to believe as the Washington establishment largely does that they get to play Santa Clause – to give out gifts, redistribute wealth, pay for various benefits, and solve anything and everything that ails us, and that the money to do it is all somehow magically and marvelously disconnected from the economy and divorced from consequence to the taxpayer, then we will pay an even greater price down the road.

But if, like the town of Vallejo, CA, as a nation we’ve had our Pogo moment, and finally realize that someone has to pay for all those wonderful promises, and that that someone is us – then we want a McCain administration that isn’t going to embark on burdening promises we can’t keep and programs we can’t afford.

The numbers have rallied for McCain when he’s spoken such politically incorrect but frank truths before. He can do it again.