Events moved at broadband speed last week (9/14–9/20) with the stock market plunging, bouncing back, plunging, then bouncing back again to finish with a narrow loss—while Barack Obama’s poll numbers went straight up, from minus 1.5 to plus 8 in some polls, averaging out around plus 3.

His turnaround, unlike the market’s, could remain for some time to come. At least until Friday’s great debate.

It was the week John McCain made what may be the ultimately fatal gaffe of the campaign, proclaiming the fundamentals of the economy are sound—just as the market was plunging 500 points and the entire system teetered on the brink of collapse.

He quickly redefined “fundamentals” as the “American worker” for those poor saps among us who always thought the fundamentals were gross domestic product, inflation, productivity, unemployment, money supply and such trivia. Of course he admits economics isn’t his long suit.

Perhaps more than one pensioner wondered what might have happened to her Social Security had it been invested in a private, Wall Street account as proposed by McCain and George W. Bush.

It was the week Sara Palin’s popularity began a Lehman—her positive-negative ratio dropped like the Dow, netting out at minus 1 in one poll.

Perhaps some said “thanks, but no thanks” to the thought of her lying in a tanning bed in the White House while the economy tanked. Perhaps her fibbing flip-flops rusted that rhodium-plated reputation for honesty. Perhaps some wondered what she and “first dude” Todd were covering up by refusing to testify in Troopergate. Perhaps others simply decided they just don’t like someone murdering Bullwinkle and eating him for lunch.

Or maybe some heard McCain’s chief surrogate Carly Fiorina charge that Palin couldn’t run a major corporation, then make it worse by saying McCain and Obama and Joe Biden couldn’t either. Fiorina should know, having cut Hewlett-Packard’s value in half before she was fired as CEO. But she got a 24-karat, $43 million parachute—the kind McCain calls a cause of Wall Street’s collapse.

Fiorina joins chief financial advisor Phil “Nation of Whiners” Gramm in McCainiac limbo, like White Russians in the cafes of Paris, awaiting the day they return to power.

Meanwhile, Commander in Chief Bush stared like a moose caught in Palin’s headlights while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson assumed the presidency by calling congressional leaders together to lay out a plan.

As Bush stared speechlessly they created a $700 billion economic nationalization plan that involves more bailing out than hurricanes Katrina and Gustav combined.

This new form of government is called Trickle-Down Socialism.

It’s related to what we used to call Lemon Socialism: when a major industry such as passenger railroads fails, turn it over to the government.

Bush then proclaimed: “My first instinct wasn’t to lay out a huge government plan. My first instinct was to let the market work. Until I realized when being briefed by the experts how significant the problem has become. So I decided to act and act boldly.”

Now if only some experts would brief him about the health-care system!

This was the week McCain played ideological musical chairs. After years of boasting he was a deregulator and demonically voting like one, he angrily began calling for stiff regulation, railing against Wall Street greed like Lenin at the Finland Station.

He angrily denounced every lobbyist in Washington except the seven who run his campaign. He angrily denounced each bailout before it happened, then passionately embraced all.

His form of government is called Grouchy Marxism.

But he finally settled on the true cause of the economic collapse: Barack Obama.

Forget that McCain supported damaging deregulation for 23 years before the Democrat got to Washington.

Of course, that Democrat might just decide to propose a new Resolution Trust Corporation—as was set up following the savings-and-loan scandal of the ‘80s.

That might even bring up echoes of the Keating Five—the congressmen who tried to exonerate Charles Keating, the leading S&L crook, who was McCain’s major contributor and wife Cindy’s business associate.

McCain is the only surviving Fivester—the only senator whose peers officially denounced him for exercising bad judgment. But the way McCain attacks everything these days he’ll say it’s a badge of honor.

History may record last week as the election’s turning point: Seven days that shook the world.