There is a certain circle of hell, designated for Beltway insiders, where the Belmont debate will be played on a continuous loop for the rest of time. Despite breathless anticipation for a riveting, running rebel, garage band type of town hall forum, we got a debate that did its damnedest to bore the financial crisis to an end.

Tom Brokaw, of course, was borderline schoolmarmish, jumping in with the time limits like the candidates were on the brink of apocalypse if they broke a rule. Other than the opportunity to walk around, nothing distinguished Belmont from Oxford. While it's a tad tempting to pin the blame on Brokaw and the unsatisfying mutation of a town hall we witnessed, something far more significant underlies the standoff.

If the dark state of the economy will decide the election, then from a policy standpoint, John McCain and Barack Obama are the same candidate. Government intervention, regulation and a nebulous sense of "fairness" will rule the day no matter what. And Obama will always win against a like-minded opponent.

Last spring, a nation watched Hillary Clinton's terrible, terrible Manchurian Candidate candidacy crumble before an opponent who thought all of her thoughts before she did. Once she abandoned hawkish centrism and did a wind sprint to shore up the liberal base Obama courted, she was finished. We endured 21 painful rounds of Obama and Hillary slapping each other around over minute details of a socialist healthcare system. Late to the populist game, Hillary could never triumph over the shining, charismatic Obama.

We're now back in the same bell jar. McCain and Obama essentially argued over who wrote a better letter to warn us about Fannie and Freddie.

Twice, McCain ludicrously suggested the Treasury buy all the bad loans in this country - a sure-fire way to render property values meaningless in this country and expedite our eminent inflation plague. Meanwhile, Obama, responding to $700,000 tax cuts for corporations, announced, "That is just not fair." How many Americans work for or are directly affected by corporations? His vow to lessen the tax burden on 95 percent of Americans neglects the millions of Americans who will be affected directly or indirectly by increases in capital gains taxes and the 300,000 small businesses affected by his tax plan.

The way Obama spits "deregulation," the women in the Sunday circles may as well stitch it in scarlet on somebody's lapel. Sarah Palin, too, trumpets regulation as though the federal government's stern countenance will not only restore the economy but cause it to flourish. In part, the origins of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disasters bow at the feet of federal regulation; for 15 years, both the Clinton and Bush administrations pushed home ownership at any cost, and in 2008, the U.S. was backed into a corner so far, $700 billion had to be allocated to stave off utter financial implosion.

As McCain said, "The last president to raise taxes during tough economic times was Herbert Hoover, and he practiced protectionism as well." But McCain has a proven record of regulation on campaign finance, tobacco and, most recently, Wall Street. Now, regulation is not always a bad thing, but this is like playing with matches when the problem began with a fire.

McCain and Obama will never be the same candidate - a hearty chasm separates them on foreign and tax policy, especially - but on the economy, McCain has failed to distinguish himself from both Obama and President Bush. He must do so in these last four weeks, especially if the economy continues to be a scene out of "The Day After Tomorrow." Because, like Hillary before him, McCain will never win a popularity contest against Barack Obama.

Katherine Miller is a junior in the College of Arts and Science. She can be reached at katherine.m.miller@vanderbilt.edu