Are You Better Off Today than Four Years Ago?

++That was the question Willard Romney asked and he said that the answer on this President was No , just as it was for Jimmy Carter.

++When Romney began his campaign during the primary, he cited the old Misery Index Reagan invoked about Jimmy Carter. As I wrote at that time, and it still holds true, if you combine unemployment with inflation, you have about an 8 or 9. If you had a full employment economy and about 3% inflation, you would have an 8. It doesn't make sense until you are in the teens, which we are not.

++The answer to Romney's question will be a personal one for millions of Americans. For me, I don't find the time as nerve-wracking as before. During the collapse of the economy, my credit cards increased their rate almost every month and payment times began to shrink so that one was basically paying banks every week. Remember I never missed a payment. That stopped with the Dodd-Frank bill. Now it's back to the monthly bill and the usual time frame I was used to since my 30s. When the economy collapsed, I lost over 60% of my net worth and my entire savings. That wasn't recovered but for people with 501-Ks including Mitt Romney their stock portfolios came back about 70%.

++There are other intangibles in answering that question. I got to refinance my house at bargain basement interest rates. The anxiety of going bankrupt for an illness is gone because of Obamacare. I got a free colonoscopy and my wife free preventive care because of changes in the health insurance system. I get to insure my son until he is almost 26. My son will graduate (knock on wood) debt free because Obama made applying for financial aid easier and more streamlined. 

++Then I enjoy a country where we recognize our pluralism and ethnic diversity. There are old issues I have always wanted resolved--the black farmers' lawsuit, the Indian Law Trust fund case, and the more  personal interest of having better music in the White House. I also liked having a President speak English and able to be eloquent, something Republicans seem to downplay and dismiss. 

++Also I enjoy not having a lot of fear-mongering. The previous Administration with its color coded terrorism ratings and the constant harping about this or that attack made everyone in the Beltway a nervous wreck and it served conveniently to strip away civil liberties--which unfortunately have not been restored.

++For the unemployed and the poor, as a country we haven't been kind or generous. I remember the woman in Pennsylvania when she was asked about Obama in 2008 and whether she hoped. She said that she was constantly losing ground and that she didn't dare hope because she had to manage with what she had left. But it is not President Obama that can be blamed for this, it is the Congress that was paralyzed by the most excessive use of the filibuster in our history and a House that treated the 39 times it repealed Obamacare as a jobs bill or the many times it outlawed abortion. 

++Whether President Obama wins re-election, history will look kindly on him. He restored a sense not only of hope but probably more importantly a sense of competence in governance.