Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiBush’s Economic Performance: A Final Tally
Five years ago, Forbes magazine performed a worthy public service. The right-leaning business publication that dubs itself, "Capitalist Tool," published a set of criteria by which to judge the economic performance of 10 post-war presidencies. It then evaluated each presidency against that set of criteria.
The criteria themselves are straightforward. They include GDP growth, real disposable personal income, employment, unemployment, inflation, and deficit reduction. All are mainstream metrics of economic performance. Data for each are readily available from public sources and are regularly updated.
It is a measure of Forbes' integrity that it let the chips fall where they may. The top three performers were all Democrats: Clinton, Johnson, and Kennedy. The bottom three were all Republicans: Nixon, Eisenhower, and Bush I. The middle was a mixture of Republicans and Democrats: Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Truman.
Interestingly, however, Forbes didn't use the criteria to evaluate the candidate it was supporting for President at the time, George W. Bush, even though the article was published in July 2004, in the middle of a presidential election. Surely they ran the numbers. One can't resist suspecting that their boy fared poorly for the comparison.
But now, with his two terms ended, it is worthwhile evaluating Bush's performance and comparing it with that of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton's. The reason for choosing Clinton is that his is the only two-term Democratic presidency since the 1960s and the two are adjacent, sharing similar post-Cold War contexts.
A comparison is also needed because Republicans have taken to criticizing anything Obama, without offering alternatives. But Bush's economic policies were of the exact same ilk as Ronald Reagan's and his father's, George H.W. Bush. They are classic, trickle down economics whose principal purpose is to shift ever more of the nation's wealth to the already wealthy. Bush's policies ARE the Republican alternative so it's important to know the results they produce.
So what do the data show?
The first metric Forbes offered was real growth in Gross Domestic Product. GDP measures all the goods and services produced in the economy in a single year. The "real" part factors out the effects of inflation. It is the most encompassing of all measures of economic performance.
During Bush's eight years in office, real GDP grew by 2.0% per year. Over Clinton's eight years, it grew 75% faster, 3.5% per year. The difference is so great that Clinton actually added more to the GDP in his eight years than Bush did in his, despite having started from a much lower number. Clinton 1: Bush 0.
Forbes' second metric was real disposable personal income. As noted above, the "real" part factors out the effects of inflation. The "disposal" part adjusts for taxes. So real disposable personal income tells us what a person's income actually buys, after inflation and taxes. It is one of the most meaningful measures of economic well-being.
As with real GDP growth, the numbers differ greatly. Bush grew real disposable personal income by 19.6 % over his term. Clinton grew it more than 40% faster, by 28%. And this comparison is understated because the vast bulk of income growth under Bush went to the very wealthiest of income earners. Between 2000 and 2007 two thirds of all the growth in the entire economy went to the top 1%. If average incomes were considered, the difference in performance would be far more stark. Clinton 2: Bush 0.
With employment, the third measure of economic performance commended by Forbes, the differences between Bush and Clinton become monumental. Clinton's economic policies created 23 million new jobs over his eight-year tenure. It was the greatest number of jobs ever created under one presidency.
Bush's record on employment was equally legendary, but for the opposite reason. Despite inheriting an economy that was one third larger than the one Clinton inherited, Bush created a mere 5 million new jobs, one fifth the number created by Clinton. It is the lowest percentage level of job growth ever recorded for any eight year period outside of the Great Depression. Clinton 3: Bush 0.
Employment, of course, is closely related to the fourth of Forbes' measures of economic performance: unemployment. When Bill Clinton took office, in January 1993, unemployment stood at 6.9%. When he left office, it was at 4%, the lowest level since 1969.
When George Bush took office, he inherited Clinton's unemployment number, 4%. When he left office, in January 2009, the unemployment rate stood at 7.2% and was skyrocketing. The economy was hemorrhaging 600,000 jobs per month. Today, unofficial unemployment stands at 9.7%, the second highest rate since the Great Depression. Clinton 4: Bush 0.
Inflation is the fifth measure in Forbes' overall evaluation framework. Inflation can create the illusion of prosperity but it does so by debauching the purchasing power of money. So, it is routinely considered one of the most important gauges of economic performance. Lower numbers are better. Inflation averaged 2.54% per year under Bill Clinton and 2.83% per year under George Bush. Clinton 5: Bush 0.
The final measure of economic performance recommended by Forbes is reduction in the federal budget deficit. Deficits occur when the government spends more than it takes in in taxes. Like inflation, deficits create the illusion of prosperity by spending money borrowed from the future. They are a favored ruse of Republican presidents which have used them relentlessly to deliver fake prosperity over the past three Republican administrations. When the borrowing has to be repaid, which we're coming up on now, the effect will be devastating.
Here, the comparison is off the charts. Clinton inherited a $290 billion deficit from George H.W. Bush. He reversed Bush's and Reagan's trickle down economic policies, raising taxes on the wealthy, and reducing them on the working and middle classes. As a result, he was able to reduce the deficit every single year of his presidency. By 1997, the government was running budgetary surpluses, the first since 1969. He delivered a $230 billion surplus in 2000.
Bush reversed Clinton's policies, lowering taxes on the very wealthy - his "base" as he called them - and effectively raising them on everyone else. In his first full year at the helm of the economy, he delivered a $157 billion deficit, and he never looked back. By 2004, the deficits were topping $400 billion a year. While Clinton delivered surpluses, Bush's deficits totaled some $3.7 trillion over his eight-year term. Clinton 6: Bush 0.
There is no subtlety, no ambiguity about the data or the economic performance they reveal. By every single measure, Bush's policies and tenure were worse - much worse - for the American economy and the American people than those pursued by Bill Clinton. And we are still living today in the aftermath of the destruction they have wrought.
We could add any number of other measures as well, measures not offered up by Forbes but which are still straightforward indices of economic performance. Clinton reduced poverty, from 15.1% when he took office to 11.3% when he left. Bush increased it, from 11.3% when he started to 12.5% at the end of 2008.
The stock market more than tripled under Clinton's tenure. The Dow Jones Industrial Average went from 3,241 when he took office to 10,587 on the day he left. It actually declined under Bush's tenure, from 10,587 on the day he took office to 8,281 on the day he left. Between the recent stock market collapse and the housing crash, Bush destroyed more than $14 trillion in consumer wealth, a staggering, almost incomprehensible legacy of devastation that will haunt Americans for decades to come.
Confronted with such data, Republicans routinely cavil that the comparison is stacked to favor Democrats. But it can hardly be said of Forbes that it is a left-leaning publication. Quite the contrary. Forbes' framework is persuasive precisely because it comes from an unimpeachable Republican source.
And knowing all too well Bush's abysmal record, Republicans try to weasel away from it by claiming that presidents really don't have that much to do with economic performance. Forbes addressed this as well, stating directly, "Fairly or not, each president is judged by how much prosperity is delivered on his watch."
Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying that people are entitled to their own opinions but they are not entitled to their own facts. The facts are undeniable: Bush's economic policies lose by every measure. He fails not just one but every single comparison. And the differences could not be more dramatic. His policies were a catastrophe for the American people, leaving them poorer, more indebted, and less economically secure.
As Republicans continue to bash Barack Obama it is important to remember that Obama is still trying to clean up the mess left by Bush. It's equally important to keep in mind that they almost never propose any alternative - witness the do-nothing whining about health care.
But when it comes to the economy, the alternative is known. It is specific, it is documented, and it is undeniable. It is the legacy of Bush II, the same enrich-the-wealthy policies that Bush I and Reagan pursued. They are a proven prescription for disaster. Let the buyer beware.
29 Comments so far
Show AllGreat article. It's hard to argue with facts and hard data. There are so many Limbaugh bobble heads out there who are so deeply brainwashed and set in their ways that they will look at something like this and completely ignore it. I see it every day at work, especially our management, and it's sad. Right wing hate radio has unfortuately created nation full of idiots who kick against the goads (vote against their own interests). It's also unfortunate that there are no progressive talk show hosts with enough balls to buy some air time and start snapping some of the sheep out of their trance.
The record shows quite clearly over the last 70 years Americans have done much better financially under Democrat Administrations rather than Republican Administrations. Republicans have always supposedly been the party for "fiscal conservatism and probriety" in otherwords the party which will take care of finances better than the Democrats. The record shows the complete opposite....When will the electorate figure this out....
What is this crap....
"By every single measure, Bush's policies and tenure were worse - much worse - for the American economy and the American people than those pursued by Bill Clinton. And we are still living today in the aftermath of the destruction they have wrought.
We could add any number of other measures as well, measures not offered up by Forbes but which are still straightforward indices of economic performance. Clinton reduced poverty, from 15.1% when he took office to 11.3% when he left. Bush increased it, from 11.3% when he started to 12.5% at the end of 2008.
The stock market more than tripled under Clinton's tenure. The Dow Jones Industrial Average went from 3,241 when he took office to 10,587 on the day he left. It actually declined under Bush's tenure, from 10,587 on the day he took office to 8,281 on the day he left."
If it were not for Clinton beating organized labor over the head by signing the USA onto the horrible GATT and NAFTA treaties (which was the largest reduction of union members under any President since the Wagner Act was signed into law allow creation of unions) and allowing major multi-national corporations to close factories here and flee the United States for cheaper labor and no environmental standards and then Clinton taking part in allowing the biggest merger in US history Exxon & Mobil which set the pace for a race for other corporations to gobble up their competition (with I am guessing was the start of the steep slide back to creating trusts which were busted 80 years earlier) which BOTH mentioned acts caused the stock market to EXPLODE under Clinton and lets not forget....a surge in funding private prisons (also listed on the stock exchange), jailing a million pot smokers, kicking women off welfare and giving corporations like Lockheed Martin contracts to hire cheap labor (did anyone see Bowling for Columbine?)....
Stop making excuses for Clinton and the spineless corporate owned Democrats....you make me want to PUKE!!!
So far Obama has made sure the Oligrachs haven't missed a vacation or a lobster lunch on his watch. For the rest of us it's been day old bread if that's available.
If the election of Barack Obama ever proved anything it proved that who is elected to any position is irrelevant.
As long as the Plutocratic Oligarchy is in control it matters little who is in power at the top--middle---or bottom of any of the political parties or any that might 'be invented'.
This makes the USA and the American people nothing but slaves to the Plutocratic Oligarchy nothing more.
Only slaves can free themselves.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
It's exactly THAT attitude that gave us W. Have you learned NOTHING from that? Good God, think for a minute, do you REALLY think that things would be exactly the same if McCain had been elected? Hell, he might even be "mysteriously" dead by now and we could be stuck with Caribou Barbie in the office!
And do you REALLY think that Gore would have nominated Roberts and SCalia for the SCOTUS? Do you REALLY think that Gore would have allowed over 60 warnings to go unheeded and let us get attacked on our own soil? Do you REALLY think that we would be in Iraq and Afghanistan with him as president? Do you REALLY think that global warming would be COMPLETELY ignored like it has been for the last 8 years? Do you REALLY think that the ultra rich would have gotten tax break after tax break?
I'm sorry, but you are looking at the world through a serious set of coke bottle glasses. Who gets in does indeed matter. And W proved that in spades. That is a lesson that EVERY American should learn, if they haven't already.
drosera you forgot to mention that bush spent the surplus on a
war built on lies and deception the only thing that little
georgie had any real talent at! if you look at little georgie's
resume you come to realize that he would screw up making a buck
on the cure for cancer! other then that everyone here is right
on spot. the only way to end this is start marching! its the only thing they will ever understand!
". . . you come to realize that he would screw up making a buck
on the cure for cancer!"
If prostitution were legal and W owned the only whorehouse in the US, he'd manage to lose money.
q
ARRRGH ! Obama is already 8 MONTHS into his presidency and this author is still talking about Dubya's economic performance ?!? Ok, mister. Everyone knows Dubya was terrible on the economy all the way but for the past 8 months, Obama has been doing just as bad if not worse. I know things such as fixing the long term economic damage can take time but even then, Obama has been moving along Dubya's direction for the worst. He hasn't changed direction even one bit ! At this point, even Dubya is looking irrelevant when it comes to the ongoing economic bleeding.
P.S.: In case anyone thinks I simply hate Obama, I don't. But here are my biggest complaints about him which I voluntarily took the time to think and write down for a homework assignment for one of my friends on Alternet plus I promised Henry8 that I would show the list. Here goes:
1. Bailing out the wrong people who are already well to do such as Wall $treet.
2. Continuing the wars and occupations and adding new ones. Biggest disappointment is replacing soldiers with mercenaries in Iraq !
3. No intention of repealing Dubya's NCLB which would bring back some room for critical thinking and reasoning and stop making it easier for military recruiters to seduce students into signing up.
4. Nothing planned on reducing the costs of education. He can preach to kids about staying in school but if education is so expensive, it's hard to expect them to stay through college.
5. No plans to reverse the trends in outsourcing jobs to cheap slave labor. Employers love to misuse the education excuse.
6. No plans to rein in "free" trade scams such as NAFTA, CAFTA, China PNTR, etc...
7. No intention of ending the corporate tyranny that is responsible for stifling small business, non-monied innovators and inventors, and small farmers. I'll explain down the road.
8. No support for small farmers. Instead, it's all just support Big Agri and persecute the small farmers to bankruptcy and tears !
9. No plans to undo FISA, Patriot Act, and restoring other civil liberties and freedoms stolen this past decade alone.
10. No plans on reforming health care. Single payer is off the table and alternative practitioners are given no voice.
11. No plans to save the environment by funding public transportation and I'm back to having to drive 45 miles to work thanks to PT being unavailable in my area. Cap and trade does nothing other than give W$ another bonus. I also hate gas guzzler and can't stand Uncle Sam rewarding them while giving gas sippers fewer and smaller tax breaks despite the expense. Also Uncle Sam is funding Big Oil, Coal, Gas, and Nuclear with our taxpayer money when they shouldn't be. Let solar and wind technologies actually compete and see what tech really wins by themselves.
12. No plans to end the war on drugs and especially ending the prohibition on cannabis. Thousands of uses of industrial hemp as some have pointed out on this site.
These 12 are equally frustrating and the most so.
Yet another right-wing drone trying to shift all of the blame for our current mess away from Bush/Cheney and onto Obama.
Obama has been in office for eight months and you list twelve complaints against him. W was in office for eight years and you list . . . nothing.
q
HA HA HA ! Everytime I get called a rightwinger I can't stop laughing hard.
I already know that Obama has been in office for 8 months but that's more than enough time sufficient to be able to make a push for change in direction. No quickstepper, Obama has only gone to the right of Dubya. I'm not shifting blame away from Dubya as my post may look like at first. What I am saying if you had read carefully and had actually paid attention to what has been going on more closely, you would have realized that Obama has not only continued Dubya's policies but has furthered some of them for the worse. Even where it appears that he hasn't, he simply ding-donged it to pretend going left but still maintaining status quo or in cases like health care reform, he simply left it to Congress for god knows what. Now, he was quick to pass phony "stimulus" packages filled with pork, more tax breaks for the already well to do, and very limited funding for public infrastructure improvements that were sorely needed. Please tell me that it's a-okay to fund billions for more empire building and yet slash funding needed to improve public transportation ! With false hope and chump change at best, I'm glad I voted for Nader a third time but feel just as sick with this current administration as I did with the last. Obama was better pre-2005 at best. He has been one hell of a corporate devil puppet once in Washington, arrrgh !
The same gangsters are running the show. Who we 'vote' for and who we see is all an illusion.
"Who we 'vote' for and who we see is all an illusion."
That is true for most voters who vote like judging a book by its bookcover rather than its content. When more people vote on the issues and pull it all apart, then we could perhaps shatter that illusion or at least have a better chance at it.
So, what are we to conclude? Democrats=good, Republicans=bad?
I'm pretty much with waldo-evans. The hardened war criminal Democrats have nothing on the Republicans, except possibly economic performance as measured by our dear friends and co-thinkers at Forbes.
We must demand universal peace, sustainability, equality and affluence - Nothing less! Neither of the mercenary parties in Congress will ever bring us that, or even try to. They are committed to inequality and illegitimate dominance by capital. The experiences of our great grandparents showed that the only way forward was coordinated international proletarian revolution under communist leadership. Like it or not, that remains the correct prescription for the cancer of imperialism. Take your collective heads from the clouds of idealism, and get to work on uniting humanity based upon sound historical principals! The only alternative is mass death and injustice without end.
Something that the author of the article left out: The Glass-Steagal act that deliberately separated savings banks from investment banks, enacted at the end of the Great Depression to prevent another such occurrence, was repealed by Clinton at the request of Timothy Gietner (now Treasury Secretary) among others.
The present economic collapse we are enduring is attributable to the policies enacted by the best Republican President the Democrats ever fielded.
At least until Obama...
Walk in peace.
Interesting that you mention only Geithner and not Phil Gramm, the author and sponsor of the bill which defeated the Glass_steagall act.
I'm not religious but I'm tempted to believe that there is a special place in hell for you goddammned republican trolls trying to obfuscate the record of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the worst administration in US history.
q
Freeman sez: "Bush destroyed more than $14 trillion in consumer wealth, a staggering, almost incomprehensible legacy of devastation that will haunt Americans for decades to come."
***
I would submit that $14 trillion was not so much "destroyed" as "redistributed".
Oh, and the last seven words of the sentence suggest this "final tally" is mayhap not so final.
The underlying structure of the article's argument between is flawed. You take one eight year period and compare it with another, attributing economic performance to differences in governmental policy, but the differences in the economy might be due to other factors unrelated to governance. Clinton rode a couple of bubbles, the tech boom and real estate boom and looks pretty good. Bush had them pop under his presidency and suffers from their harmful consequences.
Fact is, Clinton and Bush (and Bush I and Reagan) subscribed to an economic theory (the Chicago School) that ruined the country's economy. Neither Repubs nor Dems acted responsibly to head off the effects of various bubbles that have triggered recessions. There is little difference between the two parties, making "democracy" a futile exercise of choosing between different personalities that share the same governing philosophy.
How soon we conveniently forget.
The tech bubble popped at the end of Clinton's tenure, producing the recession Bush whined about inheriting. The Dow was already on the way down before Bush took office.
The real estate bubble was the replacement bubble for the tech bubble, and occurred wholly on Bush's watch.
And you are, of course, entirely forgetting the harmful consequences of Bush's tax and war policies, both of which were wholly volitional.
Other than that, though, poor little George was a total victim of circumstances.
flyingcrow: How soon you conveniently forget that W and Greenspan pushed home ownership so much that they helped perpetrate the toxic mortgage meltdown of a year ago that continues today. Virtually everyone hailed Greenspan as the nation's ultimate financial genius but even he didn't see the disaster coming. Then we found out a lot of his financial "moxie" came out of "Atlas Shrugged".
Bush's stupendous tax cuts for the very rich and the rape of the middle and lower classes will be felt for at least another generation. His tax credits for Big Oil and King Coal and virtual disregard for renewable energy development has made Japan, China, Taiwan, India, Norway, Germany and Spain the leading manufacturers in the solar and wind industries, the only consistent growth technologies existent today.
Bush has been a disaster his entire parasitic life but I'd never consider him a victim. We've had some bad presidents but none has been more undeserving of the public trust than George W. Bush.
http://freesolaradvice.blogspot.com
Broadly stated what you describe is true, but in implementing those policies Bush did far more damage to the economy than Clinton. Take the deficit, Clinton taxed those who could afford to be taxed while Bush shifted the tax burden from the wealthy onto the backs of the Middle Class and working poor. Bush shifted the tax burden from unearned income like capital gains and dividends to earned income, aka, wages. Did many democrats and all of the blue dogs support these policies? Unfortunately yes.
Bush was also far worse when it came to regulating the economy, slashing funding on environmental protection, work place safety, enforcing labor law and pushing “deregulation” to the extreme across the economy.
The advent of “Crony Capitalism” during the Bush administration certainly had no parallel during the Clinton administration.
Finally so much of the Federal spending for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had the economic impact of pouring money into the sewer. Unlike military spending in past wars that created lots of jobs today’s hi-tech military gizmos are not labor intensive to build. In both Iraq and Afghanistan plane loads of cash were literally flown overseas and tossed at problems. On much of this spending Uncle Sam got fifty cents worth of bang from every one hundred dollar bill tossed at the problem. The same could be said for most of the spending devoted to crony capitalism.
I’m far from a fan of Bill Clinton but George H. W. Bush is in a league of his own when it comes to screwing up the economy.
The economic mess we are in is a result of bi-partisanship support for deregulation of banking, transportation, energy, support for NAFTA and globalization policies and outsourcing of industries. Both parties supported the repeal of Glass-Steagal act and turned a blind eye to the buildup of toxic bubbles of speculative financial instruments. Both parties have supported the HMO for profit law in healthcare. Both parties rely on the outdated and foolish economic criteria mentioned in this article as to how the judge the health of an economy. Both parties believe that growth in financial markets (due to hedge funds-derivatives etc.) are an indicator of wealth despite the fact that our nations steel mills, factories and farms have been dismantled.
Both parties are so dimwitted as to think that wealth is a gigantic bubble of electronic paper as opposed to an economy that is based on the production of the physical goods and infrastructure that are necessary for human life.
We used to be the worlds leading producet nation in goods, technology, research and science and over the past 30-40 years we dismantled everything we built up in the post war period to become an imperial parasite on the global stage importing what we once produced from underdeveloped nations and charged it on a credit card.
Your post is right on the money. Suppose Gore had won in 2000. We would have likely seen a continuation of bombing in Iraq, perhaps a war in Afghanistan, a bloated military budget, tax cuts, more deregulation, "free" trade agreements, no end to corporate lobbying, and on and on. Surprising the contributors to this site are so blind to the structural failings of US "democracy." The system is broken--there are no significant differences between governing philosophies of Democrats and Republicans. It is true that Bush as a personality was more unhinged than Gore and that led directly to terrible mistakes, but the governing principles of the two parties do not differ.
Excellent post, and Bush and his cronies put that dismantling on the fast track. Clinton started it, and Bush gave it the juice. Think about how tough things would get if China, India, and other nations suddenly demanded payment before shipping us more goods. We'd go belly up over night.
Obama is trying to clean up the mess left by Bush? How? By continuing his wars, his bailouts to Wall Street and giveaways to health insurers?
Let's not forget that the "Bush mess" was facilitated by Obama and Democrats every step of the way, they authorized his wars, kept funding them and rubber-stamped each and every one of his criminal policies. Number of Democratic filibusters during 8 years of Bush: ZERO. What a ridiculous article.
"Number of Democratic filibusters during 8 years of Bush: ZERO."
What you fail to remember is the threat by republicans in the Senate under majority leader Bill Frist to lower the vote required for closure from 60 to a simple majority if the Dems ever attempted a filibuster.
Democratic complicity does not excuse republican responsibility.
See drosera's post at 9:47 AM for a much better response.
q
Please, when are you Dem Party Apologists stopping with the excuses? You're fooling no one.
Please, when are you republican trolls "stopping (sic)" with the "deflect the blame" game? You're only fooling yourselves.
q
Republicans or Democrats like quickstepper can only see things in black and white, their brain span isn't wide enough. It's either Republican or Democrat, bad or good, conservative or liberal. Pathetic. No wonder Obama was able to fool so many of you.