I’ve concluded that the 2012 presidential election is going to turn logic on its head.

What’s causing this electoral dizziness? I think the liars are on the verge of winning the crucial argument about the state of the economy.

It’s now known that Barack Obama came to office four years with an economy in free-fall. He and Congress instituted some measures to prevent the economy from bleeding out. Stimulus programs kicked lots of money into projects – and a good bit of that money came to the politically unfriendly Texas Panhandle. The government bailed out the auto industry, saving it from collapse. The feds instituted strict rules on banks and other mortgage lenders to ensure they didn’t throw money at any borrower who had his or her hand out.

What’s been the downside? Yes, the national debt is far greater than anyone would want. But the economy has been saved from self-immolation. The nation is in economic recovery right now.

But that’s not good enough, say the liars, who contend that the economy needs to grow faster. They ignore the obvious positive trends for their own gain. And it’s worked, to a degree. They’ve managed to turn what should be a rout for the incumbent president into a bona bide nail-biter.

I understand fully that many of my friends in the Panhandle – which probably will endorse Romney-Ryan by a greater margin than it supported John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008 – don’t see it that way. They are frustrated with the size of the debt; I share that concern. They believe America is in decline; I, however, do not. Many of them think the nation has been seized by some foreign ideology that wants to turn America into a sort of New World Europe. Me? I take the president at his word when he trumpets America’s greatness. My friends here also are experts on health care, as they know for a fact that Obamacare is going to bankrupt the nation. I’m not smart enough to make that determination, so I’ll just wait to see how it comes together when the law takes effect in 2014.

And the thing I understand the least is how Romney has managed to remake himself with so little concern being raised among those who want to elect him. He governed Massachusetts as a moderate, yet he proclaimed during the primary season he was a “severely conservative” governor. He was pro-choice, now he’s pro-life; he favored government-run health care, now he opposes it; he supported some restrictions on guns, now he opposes all restrictions.

Newt Gingrich, of all people, was right during the GOP primary campaign when he called Romney a liar. And Romney has lied himself into a photo finish for the White House.

See you at the polls.