With fakery everywhere?some of it amusing, some of it not funny?people's ability to know where things fall on the spectrum between fact and falsity becomes so compromised that they retreat into a shell of cynicism about everything. And there is a lot to process: 9/11 deniers, Iranian Holocaust deniers, Obama birthers. Lily Tomlin provided the epigraph for our age: "I try to be cynical, but it's hard to keep up."
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Now, with more people decked out in protective coats of cynicism, it's gotten harder for the pols to sell their grand schemes. Ask President Obama.

Mr. Obama's health-care initiative has been a hard sell with the public. He pitched it before a joint session of Congress. Its difficulties during the August recess became the famous "tea parties" for members of Congress.

The tea parties were ridiculed as right-wing activism. Up to a point, perhaps, but that's too simple. Those people had been trained by the culture to be reflexively skeptical. They were struggling to understand a complex piece of major legislation that their own representatives couldn't explain.

The current president seems taken aback that so many could doubt his good intentions. But politicians trying to sell big things, whether ObamaCare or privatized Social Security or even wars, need to get better at what they do. We are all balloon boys now, learning every day how to make sure the clever people don't take us for a ride.