Perception is reality, goes an old saying that sounds astute but is actually dead wrong: Reality is reality, regardless of one's perception of it. But in today's hyper-polarized political environment, with partisans on all sides eagerly seeking out their own confirmation bias, and an ideologically wide range of news channels and websites eager to oblige, reality can be difficult to see through all the rhetorical smoke.

Case in point: Polls show almost half of Americans believe the U.S. is in a recession; it isn't, by the standard definition of two straight quarters of declining GDP.

Further, at this time last year, with inflation above 8%, a majority of Americans said they expected it to keep getting worse. Instead, it was halved to about 4% as of last month. Yet polls — measuring, as much as anything, people's perception — continue to show inflation as a top concern.

Yet polling shows only a third of Americans approve of his handling of the economy. Even among Democrats, it's under half.

That jolting juxtaposition between a generally humming (if still inflation-hobbled) economy and a perception — that word again — of economic doom and gloom likely contributed heavily to the administration's nervy decision to break out the word "Bidenomics" last week, and start making it their own.

It's the kind of bid that could backfire badly if the economy starts going south. But the point is, too much of America thinks it's already going south, in defiance of most of the hard, cold facts.

Democratic presidents in particular have historically been bad at claiming credit for good things that happen on their watch, while conservative media is especially good at saying up is down and getting wide swaths of the country to believe it. So it makes some sense for Biden to define his economic legacy before the GOP does.

Biden's push to inject trillions in federal spending into the economy, via his American Rescue Plan and pandemic programs, undoubtedly contributed to last year's inflationary spike. But that spending was also responsible for warding off a dreaded recession and helping spur today's continued strong job market.

The fact that inflation has since dropped off so dramatically, without a corresponding drop in employment or wages or loss of other benefits from the spending, has the look, in hindsight, of a gamble that paid off. Though it's not surprising that Americans who continue to pay more for goods and services than they did before the pandemic don't necessarily see it that way.

Which is why Biden's full-court press to explain how his policies have also helped spur the better news in the economy is a smart move. In a major economic speech in Chicago last week, he couched it as a reversal of decades of supply-side economics — "Reaganomics," if you will — that "that has failed America's middle class for decades" by eroding wages and exporting jobs.

With the help of those massive investments that have, yes, driven up the cost of a trip to the supermarket or the gas station, the administration can point to the creation of 13 million jobs, tens of thousands of new infrastructure projects around the country, forward-looking support for internet infrastructure and green technology and much more.

"I'm not here to declare victory on the economy," Biden said in his Chicago speech. "I'm here to say we have a plan that is turning things around incredibly quickly." Those vested — perhaps for partisan reasons — in the perception of a failing economy aren't likely to give his argument a clear-eyed assessment. Everyone else should.

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