Bail out the lakes, too? Great Lakes, Lake Erie Lagacy Act.

Barack Obama has bid $5 billion of your money to, we hope, clean up the Great Lakes and to, he hopes, clean up at the polls in the states where people most care about the health of those lakes. John McCain has professed offense at the idea that his rival for the presidency would seek to so crudely buy our election-year affection.

But, as the environmental groups that warn about the many threats to the health of the Great Lakes point out, it wouldn’t necessarily be such a bad thing if the two candidates would launch a bidding war for the right to be our new best friend.

If anything, Obama’s pledge of $5 billion to clean up the Great Lakes is only about a quarter of what environmental experts say is necessary. But it’s a start.

The states that surround the Great Lakes share many qualities, and one particular hope. All suffer to varying degrees from the deindustrialization of the Northeast and Midwest, as people and jobs have migrated to the South and Southwest. All stand to benefit greatly from their proximity to the huge fresh water reserves of those lakes and what they have to offer as a basis for industry, tourism and a quality of life that the drought-stricken Sun Belt may not be able to match.

If, that is, the industrial and municipal pollution of the lakes is arrested and reversed. If the export of large amounts of Great Lakes water is effectively banned by the Great Lakes Compact just passed by the House of Representatives, and on the way to President Bush at last for signing.

The Democratic nominee also promised to name a Great Lakes coordinator within the Environmental Protection Agency, someone to watch out for all of the lakes’ needs and threats as they touch on the activities of all federal agencies.

It is no slam on Obama to note that he is in a tight race with McCain and that at least four of the states that would benefit from Great Lakes protection — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — are important swing states in the coming election. Even in reliably blue New York, some polls show Obama a mere five points ahead of McCain.

McCain rightly derides the frequent government habit of throwing money at every problem that comes along. And if money spent on Great Lakes protection is not carefully targeted and transparently spent, then it would indeed be money thrown away.

But the need is there. All of our would-be leaders would do well to tell us how they would meet it.

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