The last time President Bush got a blank check from Congress, the United States invaded Iraq on bad intelligence with no game plan. No wonder the country is wary of handing his administration $700 billion in taxpayer-financed loan guarantees to fix the mess that its own love affair with deregulation helped create.

Who ever thought that this election's September surprise would feature free-market Republicans in a knife fight over nationalizing the toxic debt of reckless lenders? Or Mr. Bush getting more cooperation on bailout negotiations from Barack Obama and the Democrats than from members of his own party? Or shoot-from-the-hip John McCain parachuting into the talks at the 11th hour, hollering "I've suspended my campaign!"

I just hope there's still time to insert one key condition into the final agreement: Any firm that gets a dime of the public's money should be forced to forgo all lobbying and campaign contributions for at least the next decade, preferably longer.

This is the perfect moment to reform the influence-buying that shielded lenders as they played Three Card Monty with Main Street's mortgages. Just as there was no time like Emperor Hirohito's surrender at the end of World War II to demand Japan's disarmament, there is no time like the biggest financial crackup since the Great Depression to begin curbing this form of legalized bribery.

As long as the Supreme Court holds that high-priced lobbying is actually free speech, the practice can't be legislated away without a constitutional amendment. But if companies choking on bad debt accepted the ban in exchange for the Heimlich maneuver, that would be their choice.

A disaster of this magnitude doesn't just happen because the grown-ups were out to lunch. It happens because they were taken to lunch, and dinner, and on golf outings and vacations, and handed checks for their campaign coffers, and more.

The lawmakers' susceptibility to lobbying is closely related to the arms-race nature of our national politics. Candidates have to be full-time fund-raisers just to stay in the game. So a ban on lobbying may not be at the top of many politicians' wish list.

It should be, though. Without this prohibition, it's entirely possible that rescued companies would find some way to take bailout money with one hand and use it to purchase good will -- and less scrutiny -- in the halls of power with the other. We could all use a good laugh about now, but this is one joke on taxpayers that can and should be averted.

Consumers played a role in the meltdown, to be sure, when they lined up for houses they couldn't afford. But once upon a time the mortgage industry would not have written those high-risk loans. Then along came the subprime Ponzi scheme, caution went out the window and Gordon Gekko came in the front door exclaiming "Greed is good!"

Anyone paying the slightest attention knows by now that lobbying played a major role in the current collapse. Politicians of all stripes took money from Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, AIG and others while blocking common-sense regulation that might have prevented the current crisis.

In a report issued last week, Common Cause (www.commoncause.org) asked voters to ask themselves why Congress didn't see this coming. Might it have had something to do with the fact that the top five spenders among mortgage brokers and bankers paid more than $31 million in lobbying fees and political contributions since the beginning of 2007?

Also last week, the Party Time project at the Sunlight Foundation (www.sunlightfoundation.com) reported that 258 parties were thrown for members of the House Financial Services Committee by lobbyists for the financial services sector in 2008. Republicans and Democrats alike benefited.

"The very lawmakers in Congress who are making the decisions about the most massive proposed bailout of industry in history are those who have been wined, dined and sushi-ed by lobbyists," said Nancy Watzman, director of the Party Time project. "But it's almost impossible to get this information because of an embarrassing lack of transparency about the web of relationships connecting lawmakers and lobbyists."

Meanwhile, Common Cause notes, an estimated 20,000 families are losing their homes every week. Foreclosures this year and last were somewhere around 3 million, and there are currently about 2.3 million vacant homes on the market -- the highest rate ever recorded -- and a second wave of foreclosures may be coming.

"Even unscrupulous lenders responsible for steering people into predatory loans have escaped government intervention because the ... industry has so much influence in Washington," said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause.

At long last, a panicked Congress seems ready to enact some reforms. In exchange for any infusion of public money, lawmakers have said they want help for victims of predatory lending, controls on executive pay, more transparency, more accountability, vigilant oversight, tighter regulation.

Another target too big to miss ought to be the "too big to fail" phenomenon. Who ever thought it was a good idea to let firms amass such huge shares of the market that any failure turns the whole economy into the reactor core from Three Mile Island?

There are other things I'd love to see as part of any rescue effort. If American taxpayers help wipe the slate clean for a rogue's gallery of profligate, dishonest players, shouldn't those institutions' leaders (or ex-leaders) at least say they're sorry and make some kind of restitution? Shouldn't they have to give back some of the obscene salaries and perks they collected while driving their industry and its victims to ruin?

That, of course, is fantasy. The wrecked economy is real. So is this election. October is only three days away. Stay tuned for the next surprise.