[lwarmonger]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

If it was an opinion piece, I would accept the merit of your opinion.

However, since I am betting you did not even look at the article, I will clarify. The article uses statistics compiled from the economic report that the White House presents to the President himself, and Congress, every year. If you doubt the veracity of the analysis itself, simply because you consider the source biased - then I would offer to confirm the results. But since I am sure you would consider me biased at this point (yes, I am biased towards truth, rather than denial), then maybe you should follow the link the the government webpage that will allow you to directly download the entire report, in PDF format.

I DID look at the article, and if it is on Slate then it is an opinion piece of one kind or another. This one attempted to be more factual than most, however with a grand total of three democratic terms in the last ten presidential terms, it can hardly come up with enough evidence to make a case for Democratic stewardship of the economy (especially since President Carter's time in office was hardly known for sound economic policy or good growth).

Do you honestly believe that? How on Earth can you state something like that as fact? The Federal government clearly disagrees on your assertion that deficit increased under Clinton. In fact, by their records, he showed the only budget surplus since 1969 (2001 was still in surplus, but the year a President takes office, is not their budget).

That is true... however initially deficits went up (I think it was for the first two fiscal years... then he got a Republican Congress, and it stopped being a solely Democratic government and became a bipartisan one). Just because he finished his term up doesn't mean he didn't increase the deficit during his time in office, and if one is arguing for his presidency as a whole then since the national debt increased, by the measure you are using he failed there as well.

I am not saying that is his fault... this is a structural part of the US now and became systematic long before he came into office, and deficits aren't really a good yardstick for measuring economic success or sound fiscal policy. Also keep in mind that a large part of his "balanced budget" came from slashing defense spending due to the United States being not only at peace but completely unchallenged. Said defense spending had to be dramatically increased during the Bush years to compensate for a decreased military capability trying to sustain the vast array of strategic committments in a world still unstable from the loss of the international power system after the fall of the Soviet Union and the attempted(ing) rise of successor states. A lot of it also came from a series of economic bubbles that burst right about the time he handed things over. Economic cycles mean that we tend to see the results of the last presidency in the term of the next one. Ironic, eh?