ROGER KIMBALL: What Counts As Failure? “High up along one wall at the Forum is a huge digital display on which the federal debt ticks its way toward $16 trillion. That by itself ought to be enough to assure the defeat of Barack Obama, but in really it is merely one data point in a litany of failure. Last night at dinner, I expressed my surprise to a friend that the polls were as close as they were. By any factual measure, I said, Obama’s administration had been an extraordinary failure. Median household income had plummeted nearly 5 percent since 2009, the year Obama promised that, if only Congress would approve the stimulus package, he would have the unemployment rate down to 5.6 percent by now, the summer of 2012, by which time he would also have halved the annual deficit. Et very much cetera. The only promise I can think of that Obama has kept is to make energy prices ‘skyrocket.’ That he has well and truly accomplished. But otherwise, I asked as I made my way through the Caprese Salad, hasn’t his record been abysmal? And doesn’t this mean the polls should point to an overwhelming victory for Romney?”

UPDATE: Another fake Obama ad? “We suspect much like Joe Soptic that Olive Chase won’t be available for interviews.”