In an economy that resembles a natural disaster — except that it was man-made and avoidable — Americans are concerned about health care and higher education, and how they're going to pay for them.

These are universal concerns. Without health or education, we can't go forward. We can't even tread water. Education is the great equalizer and the biggest key to financial advancement and independence, far more than race, ethnicity, country of birth, or your parents' financial situation.

Educated citizens land better jobs, ones with health insurance. A healthy, educated country is a more prosperous one. If that's elite, we should all be for it.

When Americans are uninsured and sick, they drain the entire system. We all end up paying for it. And the nation suffers.

During the Republican National Convention, education came up maybe twice. You can't have the "best workers in the world," as both candidates claim, without educating them well.

Otherwise, you don't simply leave a child behind, you leave a nation.

The McCain campaign rarely mentions education. On health care, it applies the same marvelous free-market applications that got us into this fiscal disaster. The campaign is too busy fighting community organizers and former domestic terrorists, who often amount to the same thing. Who knows, they could be anywhere. I attended the same school as Bill Ayers' wife, in the neighborhood where they live. Possibly some errant terrorist dust rubbed off on me.

When businesses sputter or fail, employees' benefits do, too. In the coming months, America is going to have a boom in uninsured citizens, working and laid off.

How can you have "the greatest nation" on Earth, as the candidates state, and not provide health care for its hard workers? Before adjourning Wednesday for the year to campaign at voters' expense, the part-time, full-pay, molto-perk Pennsylvania Senate voted to improve dog kennel conditions and require vet checkups every six months, but did not a thing about health care for almost a million uninsured residents.

Pennsylvania: We love puppies. People? Not so much.

You can tell plenty about how a nation cares for its children, its sick and wounded, its veterans. The government will bail out bankers but balks at health insurance because it seems "socialized." To some of us, this seems only humane. Meanwhile, we've socialized the banks.

On the whole, Europeans and Canadians making less money live better than Americans because they don't go broke paying for health care or higher education.

Frankly, I'm suspicious of the "best workers in the world" claims because many Americans aren't trained to do much more than flip burgers and we don't make much except debt and vacant housing that no one needed.

In recent weeks, the chasm between red and blue has been bridged by green. It's the economy. It's always the economy, not the threat of domestic terrorists from the 1960s or community organizers who have the temerity to register nonwhite, nonrich voters.

On Saturday in Philadelphia, Sen. Barack Obama said, "I don't quote Ronald Reagan that often, but are you better off than you were four years ago?" Americans able to save for retirement — an increasingly phantom concept — are most likely worse off than they were four weeks ago. John McCain is, too.

And they are the fortunate. Most people are drowning in credit, carrying an average debt of $8,565 on their carnivorous plastic. Meanwhile, the average annual household savings is $392, the lowest since the Depression. We're living above our means.

With less than three weeks to go, McCain and his running mate are still talking about 1960s terrorists. The Republican National Committee sends daily e-mails about ACORN, the community organization registering poor black voters.

McCain launched a new speech Tuesday, absent specifics but big on bellicose rhetoric. "Stand up. Stand up and fight," McCain said in Virginia Beach, Va. "America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history."

Were these outtakes from Patton?

Sarah Palin took another opportunity to bash the East Coast elite, which, someone might tell her, McCain has been a member of since birth. "There is anger about the insider dealings of lobbyists and anger about the greed on Wall Street and anger about the arrogance of the Washington elite and anger about voter fraud," she said. "America, let John McCain turn that anger into action!"

After 20 months of campaigning that seems like 20 years, we had the final debate last night, one last chance for McCain — a patriot, to be sure — to lose the anger, the desperate claims, and make clear what he's running for and the important changes he wants to make.

Karen Heller is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.