As stocks cratered on Monday and lending and borrowing remained frozen, the Bush administration rushed to implement the $700 billion bailout enacted on Friday. The Treasury Department said that it would soon post help-wanted ads on its Web site for asset managers to run the program and that because of the urgency, the hiring may be "through other than full and open competition."

    Is it any wonder that the markets lack confidence? One business day after the bailout was enacted, and it already had a tilting-at-windmills quality.

    That is why it is vital that Barack Obama and John McCain, one of whom will inherit a real mess, address the financial crisis in real detail at their debate Tuesday night.

    The most immediate question is how the crisis will affect their plans and promises - because it will.

    At the first presidential debate, on Sept. 26, Mr. Obama at least acknowledged that the crisis would force him to prioritize more carefully on government spending. But then he said "we can't shortchange" energy independence, health care reform or investing in education and infrastructure. Pressed further, he said that within those broad categories, programs may have to be delayed or deferred but offered no details.

    Mr. McCain brushed aside the crisis, saying that "no matter what" the nation has to cut federal spending and "examine every agency of government" - the same prescriptions he always offers. Then Mr. McCain boasted about killing a $6.8 billion weapons contract, an act of no relevance to the financial crisis.

    The big issue for each candidate is not spending, per se, but how the crisis will affect their promises on taxes. Mr. Obama has said that he would raise taxes on the wealthy, starting next year, to help restore fairness to the tax code and to pay for his spending plans. With the economy tanking, however, it's hard to imagine how he could prudently do that. He should acknowledge the likelihood of having to postpone a tax increase and explain how that change will affect his plans. Then, he can promise to raise those taxes as soon as the economy allows.

    Mr. McCain has an even tougher job. To be straight with voters, he would have to acknowledge that the centerpiece of his economic plan - to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts beyond their expiration in 2011 and to add billions of dollars of new tax breaks - is impossible. If he went ahead with those plans, the national debt would explode, undermining the borrowing that the nation must undertake to finance the bailouts.

    We would like to hear the candidates tell Americans how they will stand up for homeowners. Mr. Obama supports amending the bankruptcy code so courts can modify troubled mortgages. Mr. McCain does not, clinging to the fiction that the mortgage industry will somehow, someday, voluntarily rework most of the junk loans.

    Americans deserve to hear much more detail about how the candidates would reform the financial system to prevent another crisis like this one. Saying that they're in favor of more and better regulation is not enough. Again, Mr. Obama has the edge over Mr. McCain, who until recently was a committed deregulator.

    In particular, the candidates need to say what rules they would support to rein in derivatives, like the $62 trillion market in credit default swaps, the complex and unregulated financial bets that led to the bailouts of Bear Stearns and American International Group. Swaps were exempted from regulation in 2000 by legislation pushed through by then-Senator Phil Gramm, Mr. McCain's economic guru. Re-regulation of derivatives involves imposing vastly more transparency on derivative traders and investors, which they are sure to resist, and establishing exchanges or clearinghouses where regulators can monitor trading on an ongoing basis.

    Substantive answers to the financial crisis are not the stuff of sound bites. It is time for the candidates to rise to the occasion.