But more than either of these things, when it came to the recovery in Columbus, Coleman credited the way local businesses had come together around the idea that raising revenue could stave off cuts and preserve investments. “They understand that part of selling a local economy is selling the quality of life in that local economy,” he said. “So if you don’t have good streets and good parks, if you don’t have a strong safety force and a strong fire department, if you don’t have the ability to grow the economy locally, businesses will not locate there. They’ll shrink and go somewhere else, because the quality of life is so bad. There are a lot of Ohio cities where that has happened, and it hasn’t happened in Columbus.”

It’s probably true, as Geithner says, that states rise and fall with the national economy. But it’s also true that a state or a city can make choices that enable it to ride out the economic lows and then take advantage when times get better. And to the extent that Columbus is leading Ohio’s economic rebound, and to the extent that Coleman was able to make hard choices that kept the city moving forward, he probably deserves as much credit as any other Ohio politician.

The second point you might take away from a visit to Columbus is that, as important as autos and factories and shale deposits are in creating a diverse stream of jobs and revenue, Ohio’s economic future will be largely tied to the new economy that Columbus and Cincinnati represent — banking and insurance and management consulting, state-of-the-art medical facilities, high-tech manufacturing and research. These industries thrive on the kinds of major investments in infrastructure and quality of life that only government can make, in schools and transportation and fiber optics and parkland. How politicians think about these kinds of investments, and how they intend to pay for them, would probably make for a more relevant debate this year than arguing over who created 1,000 new jobs in Canton last May, or whether the guy who sold you your Malibu can really be classified as an autoworker.

When George H. W. Bush sought re-election in 1992, he ran not only against Bill Clinton but also against the best economic estimates at the time. In the first three-quarters of that year, the economy was reported to have grown at unimpressive rates of 2 percent, 1.4 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively. Economic growth was perilously close to flat coming out of a recession, and a president whose passion was foreign policy seemed content to just hope for the best.

Such estimates are revisited and revised in the years that follow, however, and 20 years on, the final year of Bush’s presidency looks somewhat different. According to statistics compiled by the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia, the revised growth numbers for those three quarters are: 4.5 percent, 4.3 percent and 4.2 percent. In other words, the economy was pretty much flat from one quarter to the next, but it was performing at a higher level than anyone thought. From an economic standpoint, that may not matter much. But from a political standpoint, the difference between saying that growth is at 1.4 percent and being able to say it’s at 4.3 percent could conceivably be the difference between holding onto office and not.

What Obama’s economy will look like in 20 years is impossible to know. But the lesson here is that economic data often lag behind the political reality, and it can be hard to claim credit in the short term for progress that can be put in perspective only years after the fact. There’s no reasonable way to look at the state and not agree that Obama took steps that stabilized Ohio and made it possible for the state to find its footing, even if the expansion hasn’t been robust or pervasive. But if the candidate himself can’t make that argument effectively (or if he won’t even assume the risk of trying), then his vindication may come not at the ballot box this November but in some reconsideration of the data years into his retirement.

For Kasich, perhaps, the opposite is true. Generally speaking, governors may not have all that much to do with larger economic trends, but their careers are often shaped by catching the right wave at the right moment. Bill Clinton came to national prominence as a successful governor during the Reagan recovery. George W. Bush benefited from Clinton’s surging economy. Mitt Romney passed his universal health care plan in Massachusetts during Bush’s housing bubble and got out of office before it burst. And so too do Kasich and other Republican governors now hope to capitalize on the same recovery, however tepid, for which they keep lambasting Obama. If you’re the governor of a large state like Ohio, and you’ve already run for president once, it has to occur to you that if Obama stays in office, and the local economy continues to improve, you may just get another shot at running in 2016.