Credit President Obama’s aides with discernment. Even before the first presidential debate was over, they knew they needed to come up with an excuse, and fast. They settled on one they haven’t stopped repeating: Mitt Romney lied his way to victory.

The president would’ve rebutted Romney’s gross deceptions, except he was too focused on answering questions about the country’s future and too taken aback by Romney’s brazenness to answer in real time. Although once he had a day or two and his witty rejoinders were cued up in a teleprompter, he was absolute hell on Romney.

The case that Romney lied so brazenly that it undid the president rests, first, on the idea that the Republican misrepresented his own tax-reform plan. Obama said that Romney proposes to cut taxes by $5 trillion over 10 years. Romney denied it. The president’s team responded, with its customary civility and nuance: “Liar!”

But this isn’t even a close call. Romney wants to cut income-tax rates 20 percent across the board and make up the revenue by closing loopholes and deductions. This isn’t a tax cut; it’s a wash. It’s been Romney’s plan ever since he proposed it during the primaries. It’s such a simple concept that only willful obtuseness keeps the president or his team from understanding it.

If Romney proposed a 1 percent across-the-board cut on rates and the elimination of all loopholes and deductions, surely Obama would accuse him of wanting to raise taxes, because people would be paying more in taxes despite lower rates.

In fact, this is the approach of the president’s own Simpson-Bowles debt commission: It suggested lower rates and fewer deductions such that the federal government would garner more revenue.

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