President Obama is trying to evade responsibility for what happened on his watch!

The Republican campaign to oust President Obama from office (as opposed to trying to elect their guy--and that's what it boils down to if you watched the RNC convention, as I did) today is scoffing at the Democrats for trying to avoid the question "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

This is a question which itself tries to avoid the real question, namely "are you better off than you would have been under Republican control of the government?"

But let's take them at their word, even though their word is deceptive propaganda when it isn't lying outright. And their word is that whoever's president is responsible for whatever happens on his watch.

OK. Then let's talk about 9/11, which happened on the Republicans' watch.

And when it did, the Republicans instantly claimed it wasn't their fault. Their guy had only been in office for 9 months. The Kenya embassy bombing, the Cole bombing, Blackhawk Down (also an Al Qaeda action, it turns out), Al Qaeda's declaration of war on America, the security establishment's constant efforts to get the administration to take Al Qaeda seriously, the specific intel about using airliners as weapons? Naaaw.

See, war against nonstate entitities requires trained personnel, international cooperation, and relatively inexpensive warmaking technology (such as UAVs). War against major nations means multibillion-dollar weapons systems like the military-industrial complex likes to build, and you don't have to make nice to people who aren't Republican voters in America.

After 9/11, our spooks found it had come from within Afghanistan, so after sending a token force there--and make no mistake, that's what it was--the Republicans went to war with a real nation, which did require those expensive weapons systems (to a degree), in the face of zero actual evidence that Iraq had had anything to do with it. And after it became obvious that Iraq wasn't "it," the Republicans proceeded to throw up a smokescreen of history-revision so they wouldn't have to take responsibility for the thousands of American deaths on their hands and hundreds of thousands of foreign deaths also on their hands.

IF the American president is responsible for everything on his watch, and if excuses are not to be accepted...I await the Republican mea culpa for 9/11 and the Iraq war that ensued.

I won't hold my breath.

Because the Republicans aren't about taking responsibility. They're about blaming others for their own mistakes.

This leads to not learning from one's mistakes. Hence Romney's promise to revive Bush II's ham-handed cowboy diplomacy (in stark contrast to his father's adroit use of foreign alliances). Not to mention promising to revive trickle-down economics, which is a proven oxymoron. It even includes directing our hostile attention back to the Soviet Uni--er, Russia--you know, the country we have to beg rides from to get our astronauts into space since Bush II terminated the Space Shuttle without initiating its replacement?

The is how the Republicans' tag team president/veep wannabes have earned the sobriquet "Retro Romney and Lyin' Ryan."

Here's where I could lay into the Democrats for this, that and the other. But I won't, because right now nothing the Democrats could do with their guy in the White House is more than a blip compared to the damage the Republicans will do, given their control of Congress and the Judiciary. The Republicans' real goal is a one-party country; their model, Mexico's PRI, which ruled Mexico for 40 years, from one rigged election to the next. The GOP has become an entity that asks its members to have greater fealty to their party than to their country. They are precisely what President Washingon warned the nation about in his parting address, when he talked about the danger of factions.

So while I have plenty of beefs with the Democrats, it's time to saddle up and do what we can to keep President Obama in the White House. We won't get his policies--not with such an intransigent Congress--but at least we won't get the Republicans' middle-class-destroying policies.

Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Ever have a teacher tell you "There's no such thing as a stupid question" ?

If he did, he lied. And "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is a perfect example of a stupid question.

The right question is: "Will you be better off four years from now if the other guy wins?" And in the case of this election, that question should actually come after this one:

"If the Republicans had held onto the White House in 2008, would you be better off now?"

And of course it also depends on who you are, and whether how well off you are has anything to do with the guy in the White House anyway.

Mostly it doesn't. You got laid off because the company thought it could replace you with someone younger and cheaper. Your spouse left you because you haven't said "I love you" since your wedding day a decade ago. You got into a car accident because you were on your cellphone. You simply got four years older (in that sense you're always worse off). The price you pay for gasoline has far more to do with the world oil market than domestic policy--no American president can get China's and India's huge, burgeoning middle classes to keep riding bicycles and taking the bus to work.

But even where it does, who's to say the other guy would have done any better just because you don't love what actually happened? Things are tough for many people now (except for millionaires and billionaires, whose incomes soared in the past four years). But what if instead of struggling out of a terrible recession we were in the depths of a second Great Depression?

If you don't think things could possibly be any worse, you know nothing about our history.

Which is why Governor Romney saying "The President made it worse" is a baldfaced lie. No one can say that for sure, and in fact you could easily say the opposite--that the President saved us from another Great Depression--brought on for the most part, as any economist not working for the Koch Brothers will tell you--by Republican tax cuts for the rich that account for most of the current deficit (that's right, most--look it up) that weren't balanced by spending cuts--they just borrowed it from China; and by a Republican war on a country that hadn't attacked us; and by deregulation that enabled the banks to gamble freely, knowing taxpayers would bail them out; and also by selling homes to people who couldn't afford them, using various deceptive practices.

Romney could only be certain the "President made it worse" if he were omniscient--a god, not a man. And saying uncertain things are certain is a lie--what's known in the sciences as "false precision."

So "are you better off now than you were four years ago" is absolutely a stupid question. It was stupid when Ronald Reagan popped back in the day, and it's even stupider now (since Governor Romney is smarter than President Reagan was--even before his mind started dissolving).

It's stupid because it presumes that if you aren't you should vote for a different president.

That's ridiculous. Suppose Martin Sheen was running for president against the incumbent? Or Sarah Palin? Or Warren G. Harding, one of the worst presidents in American history by all accounts?

You can always--always--do worse than whoever's the incumbent.

Such as voting for a president/vice president team that can't stop lying about their opposition and treating their own supporters like mushrooms.

Absent specifics from Romney, we do have specifics in the Republican Platform. And unless Romney flatly repudiates his own party's platform, what's in it is what we'll get. Because he is almost certain to do what George Bush II did: sign nearly every Republican bill Congress sends him.

If you look at the 2008 Democratic Platform, you'll see that President Obama enacted most of it. That's what most presidents do, and it's what Romney is almost certain to do. Or Ryan, with Romney trailing behind his veep's Conservative Charisma.