Are we better off?

When Romney made the claim that Obama couldn't tell us that we were better off now than we were when he took office, I laughed out loud.  That statement seemed the biggest departure from reality in an entire week of big truth manipulation, if not outright misrepresentation.  Not better off now than with what Bush wrought?!?!?  The very idea was/is laughable.  We have 11/2 fewer wars, no OBL, 3 pretty healthy car companies, a functioning banking system, reduced unemployment, MUCH higher stock prices, recovering housing prices,  increased mean family income.  We are no longer considered a rouge state by the rest of the world, and we have a president who understands that our national interest is not congruent with Israel's.  And, best of all we avoided a Depression.  But here ' the clincher:  even if none of the rest were true, we would still be better off becuase George W Bush and a berserkers Republican Party is not the Commander-in Chief.  

So, how could Romney make such a preposterous claim? Well, partly, I am distressed to admit, it is probably due to the fact that neither side seems to see any downside in twisting the facts out of all recognition.  But this particular misrepresentation seemed to me to be particularly amazing since it seemed obvious that Obama could kill the Republicans with their own tag line simply by showing all the ways we are better off than we were under Bush.  
But maybe that's not true.  First off, it turns out that the Romney claim is based on a comparison of economic statistics for January 2009 to those for today.  Thus the continuation of the economic collapse W gave us suddenly become Obama's responsibility.  That's like Ryan saying that Obama cut $700 million out of Medicare, closed the GM assembly plant in Janesville, and ignored the Simpson-Bowles budget recommendations.  Oh, wait.  Ryan did say all of these.  

And that is one of my problems.  Both parties seem to be getting to the point where they consider Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman." to not only not be perjury but to actually be a model of candor.  The Republicans seem worse at this to me, but both parties have decided that any statement or characterization is OK if a lawyer could find one set of facts or semantics under which it might be true.  The idea that a statement or claim needs not to be misleading has been wholly lost.  Maybe it was never there.

But that is not really my point.  My big concern is that the Parties' contempt for the electorate's ability  to see through all this, even with the fact checking resources now available, is justified.  Have we really gotten to the point that a claim that we are better off now than we were under the Bush administration is actually credible to a significant part of the electorate?  Have American voters entirely lost their bullshit detectors?

I hope not.  I believe not.  I have an abiding faith in the third part of Lincoln's famous trilogy:  "But you can't fool all of the people all of the time."  But I have to admit that this election is shaking my faith in Mr. Lincoln's perspicacity.