On Tuesday those of us who have not already availed ourselves of postal ballots or early voting will troop to the polls to elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives, 36 of the 100 senators, 36 governors, and a host of politicians vying for local office. These old-fashioned voters will cast their votes when consumer confidence in the economy is at its highest level in about seven years. But a vast majority, although now more confident in the economy, also hold the seemingly contradictory view that our country is heading into its future on what pollsters call “the wrong track.”

As always, the economic signals are mixed. But taken as a whole they support the public’s optimism. The economy grew in the third quarter at an annual rate of 3.5 percent, the fourth of the most recent five quarters in which the growth rate has hit or exceeded 3.5 percent. True, it was defense spending and a drop in oil imports that accounted for a good part of the satisfactory growth rate. And true, too, spending on business equipment (+7.2 percent) and by consumers (+1.8 percent) grew more slowly than in the previous quarter, but such spending did grow. The monetary policy committee of the Federal Reserve Board contributed a bit of joy — only a bit because the Fed’s forecasting record does not inspire confidence — when it announced after last week’s meeting,  “economic activity is expanding at a moderate pace … [and] labor market conditions improved somewhat further.” The Fed did end its stimulative money-printing (QE3) program as promised, but offset any effect that might have by stating that it will deploy other tools in its monetary policy kit to hold interest rates at close to zero.