Don’t get too distracted by the Republicans’ road-tour version of the 2012 presidential election as it hits theaters in the likes of Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii and Illinois. The best show in town still plays daily at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If maestro Barack Obama wins re-election this fall, we will have watched one of the greatest magic acts in American history.

The new Obama magic show debuted in the State of the Union speech. Standing before Congress, Mr. Obama brought forth “An Economy Built to Last.” Not the real one we have now, but the one he’s going to conjure after he’s re-elected.

The way this works is the president breaks economic history into two parts. In his right hand are the awful policy mistakes someone else made before January 2009. In his left hand is the economy he’ll bring to life after November. In between is nothing. You think you’re looking at the Obama years from 2009 to 2012—8% unemployment, low growth, low investment—when whoa, it’s gone! Never happened.

The best was yet to come. The president of the United States is making the world itself and all its troubles . . . vanish.