Listening to Barack Obama’s lengthy State of the Union address in the same week the Republican presidential candidates held more debates in their incessant series was to visit two parallel universes.

The economy is getting better. Nope, the economy is a disaster. We need to change the tax code so the rich pay “their fair share.” Oh, no: We need to change the tax code to starve Washington and put more money in all Americans' pockets. Business needs to be regulated. Business needs to be unfettered.

Meanwhile, the personal attacks on the 2012 presidential candidates escalate. Ron Paul is “stunningly dangerous” (according to Newt Gingrich); Gingrich is arrogant, glib and unprincipled, and “not cogent” (so says his fellow conservative Rick Santorum); Mitt Romney is a callous rich guy who will say anything to get elected and who enjoys firing people (the stated view of Romney’s Republican opponents and the Obama campaign). Meanwhile, President Obama is described as either a well-meaning incompetent who is in “over his head” (Romney); or a ruthlessly effective leftist “radical” and “campaigner-in-chief” (Gingrich).

Overheated rhetoric has been standard fare on the American campaign trail for two centuries. In 1800, a Federalist newspaper warned that under a Thomas Jefferson presidency, “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced.” John Adams’ opponents accused him of wanting to pair one his sons off with a daughter of King George III in hopes of becoming king himself.

One difference in our current era, however, is that the end of an election never seems to bring even a temporary respite from the invective. Another is that political polarization and Washington gridlock have forestalled the kind of legislative compromise that allowed the country to move on to other issues. We seem stuck in a time warp.

The Republican National Committee had fun at the president’s expense over how the rhetoric in his State of Union addresses all runs together from one year to the next. But discerning citizens realize that Obama’s loitering on some issues (i.e. immigration) is counterpoised by Republican intransigence on others (i.e., tax policy).

The unlikely policy issue that has emerged as a fault line dividing the two major political parties during tough economic times is health insurance. It’s also a perfect case study for federal government dysfunction. Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP, the program for needy children, now consume 21 percent of the federal budget while something close to 50 million Americans are uninsured.

Within the Democratic Party a vision has taken root that considers access to health care a fundamental right of people living in this country. To liberals, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is a step toward ensuring improvements in health benefits, lower costs, higher quality care, economic security and fiscal sanity. Republicans, who invariably call it “Obamacare,” almost universally describe it as costly, intrusive, economically disastrous -- and a violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

As expected, the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Oral arguments are scheduled for March, a decision is expected in June or July. And although the high court is not the optimum venue for the two political parties to hash out their policy differences, neither the State of the Union address nor the 2012 GOP campaign trail has proven very enlightening either.

The United States is engaged in a stalemated, decade-long war abroad and faces a lengthy period of economic stagnation at home. But by objective measurements, good things are happening, too. In other words, the state of our union isn’t as dire as the Republican presidential candidates would have it, or as copacetic as the president implied Tuesday night.

Here is a nonpartisan snapshot of where the nation is in five areas.

Federal Debt, Deficit, Budget

Employment

Crime

Environment

Military, Alliances and U.S. Image Abroad

-Carl M. Cannon