Bush's Economic Growth: Not So Impressive

Dean Baker takes a look at this paragraph from a NYT analysis of Bush's economic record:

Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents. Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it, in large part because Americans were consumed by the war in Iraq.

Not so fast, says Baker. He pulls up the rankings of the presidential terms since 1960 by average annual GDP growth:

Kennedy-Johnson — 5.2%
Clinton — 3.6%
Reagan — 3.4%
Carter — 3.4%
Nixon-Ford — 2.7%
Bush II — 2.6%
Bush I — 1.9%

That list says an awful lot. (1) The Family Bush really doesn't know how to manage the economy. (2) Democrats are pretty good at it. (3) Carter probably gets more crap than he deserves for his economic performance.

Comments

The only thing that grows under a Bush is a deficit.

Good Stuff!

Posted by: capt on 01/28/08 at 11:36 AM Respond

Very interesting numbers. Carter matched ol' magic Ronald Reagan. Hmm... I bet that's a bit of a shocker to a lot of folks.

Posted by: The Presidential Candidates on 01/28/08 at 12:05 PM Respond

Judging from the current state of the economy, W's final number could come in much lower than the one shown above. This in addition to record national debt (just like ol' Ronnie...)

Posted by: Bill G on 01/28/08 at 12:22 PM Respond

Ironic, since Reagan also put the Federal budget in the 600-800B deficit spending...was that 3.4% worth it?

Posted by: Will C on 01/28/08 at 1:51 PM Respond

GDP is a Joke. You should do a story on the GPI - http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm

Posted by: Yeppollo on 01/29/08 at 10:24 AM Respond

Something is a little odd here. Some of these presidents had only 4 years, while others had 8 to accomplish the growth for which they are being credited.

Perhaps this should be done by presidential term. That way, for example, Reagan would be split into Reagan term 1 and Reagan term 2. This would cause his growth to be apportioned over the two terms. I suspect that Carter's term would be better than either.

Clinton's would also be split, as would Baby Bush and Kennedy-Johnson and Nixon-Ford.

We might well find out that Carter had the best economic growth of any single presidential term since 1960. What a huge slap in the face that would be to the quality of human perception!!

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 01/29/08 at 11:35 AM Respond

Yeppollo,

You are completely correct. For a more detailed discussion on the topic of GDP, please refer to my own rather lengthy blog post on the topic.

http://misanthropicscott.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/gdp-is-not-a-useful-indicator-of-anything/

The one thing I'd add though is that even with GDP being as bad as it is, sometimes it's the only number available. So, if you want to measure Kennedy vs. W, you may have no other indicators that were in place at the time.

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 01/29/08 at 11:47 AM Respond

"Some of these presidents had only 4 years, while others had 8 to accomplish the growth for which they are being credited."

The numbers listed are for:

"average annual GDP growth"

Breaking the numbers out by term would yield a different set of numbers but that does go without saying.

Posted by: capt on 01/29/08 at 1:03 PM Respond

capt,

Oops. You're absolutely right. I sit corrected. I don't know how I missed that. Thanks for the correction.

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 01/29/08 at 6:34 PM Respond

MS,

I went looking for the term number before I noticed.

IAG