‘Are you better off?’ won’t be a winning debate line for Mitt Romney

‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ That was the question Ronald Reagan told Americans to ask themselves when choosing their President in 1980, and it’s a line Mitt Romney’s campaign has been hoping would work for them this time around. ‘The president can say a lot of things, but he can’t tell you you are better off,’ Paul Ryan told a crowd in North Carolina last month. And it might be one of the ‘zingers’ Romney throws out in tonight’s debate. But the attack isn’t looking nearly as potent against Obama as it did against Jimmy Carter.

For one thing, Ryan’s claim might not actually be true. Sure, the unemployment rate in August (8.1 per cent) was still slightly higher than it was when Obama took office in January 2009 (7.8 per cent). But it has fallen by a full percentage point in the past year — and it