Will The Collapse Of Spain Put Romney In The White House?

Let’s be clear about this: Mitt Romney can only win the election if the American economy numbers plummet – significantly – in the next 30 days. Mitt’s op-eds about the Middle East are not going to cut it. That is, of course, major caveat, unless Mitt has Diebold firmly in his pocket. But that for us is a known unknown.

There can’t of course be any doubt that the US economy is a really big, if not the number one, factor that decides the presidential elections stateside. If things look good financially, the incumbent president sits pretty; if they are scraping the gutter, (s)he risks getting all the blame for it.

But who really knows whether the economy is looking up or falling down? Just about all the truly relevant data reside either in dark vaults or in some remote region of cyberspace protected by prime numbers and black holes.

Hence, and this is no coincidence, it’s not the real state of the economy that matters, it’s the perception of that state that drives the opinions of experts, analysts, pundits and the public at large. And that is true, obviously, not just in the US, but on both sides of the pond, and beyond. All incumbents across the planet have a huge interest in making their economies look as good as they can get away with. You better look good than feel good.

For the challengers that is not exactly true. They can score credits by pointing out where things are not working, and by talking about how – and how much – they would do better. But they can’t really go all out, because perception and opinion have reached a certain more or less stable level, which doesn’t allow for an overdose of difference. Metaphorically speaking, you have space for perhaps a 10 or 20 percentage point deviation from perceived wisdom, but never 90%.

Go too far and you risk you entire nation’s ridicule. It doesn’t matter whether you’re right or not. And on top of that, all your potential voters have a vested interest in the same illusion that the incumbent has: too rosy a picture of their own circumstances. A very human condition, we’re all great liars.

continue at The Automatic Earth: