The glaring example of this is the general assumption by the President's least informed (or most stubborn) critics that our current economic crisis has been caused by Obama's policies. He is frequently taunted as the destroyer of the American economic system; his motives are alternately accidental because he is an empty suited, affirmative action moron, or deliberate because he is diabolically evil, and because, well, he is a socialist. (His oppositional stance to conservative economic theory of tax reduction alone correlating, naturally, with a support for socialism). We won't comment on who really is suffering from a type of oppositional defiant disorder (you publicans in the House know who you are).
Even something so simple as an unemployment number is subject to confusion. George Bush began with unemployment at 4.2%, and in his last year in office (2008), we saw that rate jump from 5% to 7.3%. 2008 was a calamitous year and conservatives go through all sorts of contortions to absolve themselves of any responsibility for those problems. Where convenient, they will give credit to their own president, and where inconvenient, they will point out that, "well, during this period to that period," like 2006-2008, their man was hampered by Democrat majorities in the Congress. This allows all dogs to go to heaven, except Democratic ones, who carry all the blame, all the time, no matter who controls the presidency.
In any case, and on Bush's watch, unemployment went from 4.2% to 7.3%, a 3.1 point rise. Contrast this with rates under Obama. In January of 2009, unemployment stood at 7.8%, rose on momentum (that began in the previous year) to a peak of 10.1% in October 2009, only to drift downward to settle at 9.2% as of now. The Obama increase is 1.4 points and even that number is arguable, since his first six months or so would not likely reflect the results of any of his economic actions.
Do people realize this? Of course not. They correlate the rise in unemployment solely with the rise of Obama, and mostly because it's what they want to believe. If they chose to really reflect on the numbers, or when events occurred and how, they might also have to reflect on why they have such a hostility to Obama. But because high unemployment correlates (in concurrency fashion) with Obama as president, they are happy to run with this notion, despite the fact that the cause of the high unemployment was obviously triggered by events much earlier; the huge spike in unemployment rates in 2008 indicate that obvious point.
Nor do people give causal credit for actions that Obama actively took, as in stimulus. That $787 billion package was passed by Congress in 2009, and signed by Obama on February 17th of that year. Fully $288 billion of that package went to tax relief (see Wikipedia). Another $330 billion or so went toward education, aid to the states and unemployed, to Medicaid and veterans.
Despite the claims that the stimulus did not work, we eventually saw a reverse in the unemployment rate. In most cases the average anti-Obama enthusiast is not connecting the dots between stimulus and decreases in unemployment, because they are too busy trying to set up false correlations between Obama and other dubious factoids. (Those would include, "Obama is weak on terror" though we don't hear that one so often now, Osama being dead and Obama clearly no dove).
The way it works now, anything bad correlates with Obama, and regardless of the true cause which might have happened years earlier. Causation is crushed and yanked out of a historical time frame. Which is also how people who didn't care when the national debt hit $10 trillion can suddenly and violently care when it hits $14 trillion (and with cause).
We get another good look at this correlation and causation confusion in this Talking Points Memo piece that tracks the Romney campaign. He is out on the stump, visiting places that reflect our stumbling economy. He is trying to make a connection, a correlation, between failing businesses and Obama policy. Never you mind the details of why a given business might have failed. Don't pay any attention to the fact that a given business might have been struggling pre-Obama, thus severing any comparative causal relationships.
Romney does not have to be careful on this because the people he is speaking to don't really care about the details or any truth that conflicts with their own innate feelings about truth.
The latest example is in California, where the presidential candidate held a press conference in North Hollywood at Valley Plaza, an empty shopping center where multiple attempts to reverse its fortunes have failed to get off the ground. Romney admitted its problems predated Obama, but nonetheless blamed him for making the recession "worse" and thus helping squash development plans at the site.(TPM)
Just link it all together across the space time continuum, call it bad, blame Obama, repeat.
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