That vexing query: Are you better off today?

So, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Ever since Ronald Reagan first posed that question in 1980 to a nation gripped by what President Jimmy Carter called an economic malaise, it’s been part of the political lexicon. And since President Bill Clinton dropped it on the convention floor in Los Angeles in 2000, it’s become a bipartisan rallying cry.  

We can debate the wisdom and the cynicism of “Are you better off?” (Is it the primary occupation of government to see that everybody makes more money this year than last? Isn’t that question the polar opposite of the rallying cry of JFK? A person doesn’t ask if he’s better off if he’s first asking what he can do for his country.)

But for good or ill, that’s the question now facing President Barack Obama as he kicks off his party’s political convention in Charlotte, N.C., asking for four more years in the White House and the helm of an economy that most everybody agrees could be a lot better.

So are we better off? Democrats struggled to answer that question over the weekend. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley initially said no. Some Obama surrogates insisted the answer was yes. Nevada convention delegate and activist Erin Bilbray-Kohn told the Las Vegas Sun’s Anjeanette Damon that she was about the same, but that things were slowly getting better.

Only the irrepressible Joe Biden could be heard with an unqualified, full-throated answer – is there any other kind with the vice president? – “Folks, let me say something to you, say it to the press. America is better off today than they (Republicans) left us when they left!”

Really? Unemployment is higher, median family income is lower, and while we’re seeing steady job creation, the numbers aren’t nearly enough to supply work for all the people who need it. And here in Nevada – where we still lead the nation in unemployment, where foreclosures remain a constant problem, where a construction industry is still idle and looks to remain that way for a long time – there’s much more pain than promise.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin noted the Obama dilemma in a blog Tuesday: If the administration says the country is better off, it looks out of touch with the reality facing many people. But if it admits we’re not better off, Republicans will take advantage of the admission to argue for a change in direction.

Sadly, we can’t pull a George Bailey and show the country what the world would have been like had President Obama not done some of the things he did, such as pass the stimulus program or rescue the automobile industry (with the help of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and against the advice of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney). We can’t know whether – as the president argues – a recession would have turned into a depression, whether we’d be longing for the tepid growth and stagnant progress of our current reality.

By the same token, we can’t know the opposite: If Obama had acted even more aggressively, and spent even bigger, whether things would be better now, as economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues.

Instead, we have our not-so-wonderful life and two options: Cut taxes, spending and government, and hope that works better than it has in the past, or raise some taxes, keep some spending and see if the modest growth we’re seeing multiplies.

Either way, it’s a good bet they’ll be asking you the same question four years from now.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.