Either the credit markets will seize up in the next few days, or they won’t.

Businesses either will get the short-term operating loans they need in the commercial paper market, or they won’t. Either they’ll get the money somewhere else (old-fashioned banks are back in style), or they won’t make payroll and will have to start laying off people.

Either the U.S. financial markets are on the brink of catastrophe . . . or maybe the markets will adjust to a new normal, one in which there are a few casualties on the way, but one in which the market works and taxpayers don’t get stuck with the tab.

Either the car down the highway that’s headed towards us at 90 miles an hour will swerve at the last minute . . . or it won’t.

If you’re going to play chicken, you have to be prepared to pay the consequences.

Anyone who says he can predict what the financial markets will do in the wake of Monday’s bet-the-farm rejection of the Bush administration’s $700 billion financial rescue plan by the U.S. House of Representatives is talking through his hat.

Predictions range from “meltdown” to “blip.” Initial responses edged toward the meltdown end of the scale. Stocks dropped 9 percent on the day, the biggest one-day drop in more than two decades. The Dow Jones industrial average was off nearly 7 percent; the Dow closed down 778 points, its biggest one-day point drop ever.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks — the ones more likely to be included in mutual funds held by people on the now-iconic “Main Street” — were off 8.8 percent; the technology-heavy NASDAQ index lost 9 percent.

Worse could be in store. Or maybe not. The financial markets are in uncharted waters, off the edge of the map where it reads, “Here there be monsters.”

Two hundred and twenty-eight members of the House — 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats — rolled the dice and voted “no” on H.R. 3997. And what an odd coalition it was; local “no” voters included the hyper-conservative Republican Todd Akin of Town and County and the hyper-liberal Democrat William Lacy Clay Jr. of St. Louis. They included Collinsville Republican John Shimkus and Belleville Democrat Jerry F. Costello.

Rep. Kenny Hulshof of Columbia, the Republican nominee for Missouri governor, flew to Washington to vote “no,” ensuring that the bail-out vote will become an issue in the governor’s race.

The 133 no-voting Republicans thumbed their noses at President George W. Bush, whose Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, developed the bailout plan. The 95 Democrats  thumbed their noses at their leadership, including Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who led the effort to refine Mr. Paulson’s bill.

“I would like nothing better than to be proven wrong,” Mr. Frank said after the vote, saying he feared the crisis would lead to a shutdown of America’s credit system. “A large number of members of the House don’t believe it; if that turns out to be the case, I would very cheerfully admit error and take the rest of the year off.”

Clearly, politics were at work. Mr. Bush is a lame duck who can’t do much for Republican members. Democrats, particularly urban Democrats and those facing tough election challenges, didn’t want to be seen as bailing out Wall Street fat cats while their constituents are suffering.

They are missing the point: Money may not trickle down, but pain cascades down.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made an intemperate speech to start the debate, lambasting Mr. Bush’s economic policies, which did nothing to promote a bipartisan atmosphere.

Sooner or later — much sooner if the markets start to grind to a halt and pain starts to spread— a bailout bill will be back before the House. It is a time for genuine leadership — from the president, from those who would be president and from those elected to represent the best interests of their constituents.

There is a crisis. Responding to it calls for statesmanship, not gamesmanship.