Plenty of national legislation reaches the president’s desk in compromised form, but the hold-your-nose-and-vote bailout bill that squirmed through Congress this week is egregiously full of things for everyone to dislike.

Yet this ugly offspring of haste and desperation now belongs to all of us, though few want to embrace it.

The repulsiveness and inevitability of the bailout legislation were simultaneously evident this week when Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., called together, on very short notice, local business and community leaders to tell him what they thought of the proposal.

For the most part he got two answers: Not much, and what else are we going to do? It was, in effect, the local version of a collective national shrug of resignation.

Larsen, the 2nd District Democrat, didn’t try to sugarcoat what was happening. Comments during the 90-minute meeting in Mount Vernon were passionate, articulate and less partisan than you might expect. A few common themes emerged:

• Oversight of those benefiting from the bailout funds must be intense, and accountability must be transparent.

• Relief for Wall Street is unacceptable without relief for Main Street.

• Whatever Congress does won’t be enough to prevent more pain or to turn the economy around quickly.

• Taking a few days to sort out the best of the bad options was preferable to adopting the three-page, take-it-or-leave-it, all-power-resides-in-the-executive branch document the House of Representatives initially had shoved in their faces.

• CEOs of bailout beneficiaries must accept limits on their compensation.

The legislation was an overly quick response to a crisis that was allowed to develop for much too long. It took a package of unrelated “sweeteners” totaling more than $100 billion to make the whole bailout bill palatable enough for a majority of senators and congressmen to vote for it.

That leaves many lawmakers wholly answerable for action they may only partially support. Some of them may have to answer for their votes in about a month. No matter how they voted, each will have to decide how to defend the nobility of their choice.

We think Larsen made the right call in supporting the legislation, and we’re somewhat reassured by his explanations of the bailout bill’s limits. But voters everywhere are shocked, wary and angry about how the crisis came to pass, and the task of rebuilding even minimal trust in the political and financial powers that be will take at least as long as the economy’s recovery.

• Editorials reflect the consensus opinion of the editorial board and are written by its members: Publisher L. Stedem Wood, Editor Don Nelson and City Editor Dick Clever.