Best Economy in Six Years!

While the recent news about real GDP growth has been pretty good, Lawrence Kudlow overstates the case again:

If former President Clinton had overseen this economy, he’d have held daily Rose Garden news conferences to mark the occasion … Real GDP has grown at 3 percent or better for ten straight quarters, averaging 4.1 percent at an annual rate for the best performance since the middle 1980s.

If one looks at NIPA table 1.1.1 provided here and take the arithmetic average of real GDP growth from 2003QII to 20005III – one sees this 4.1%. But do the same for 1997QIII to 1999IV and one gets 4.5%. And yes, Bill Clinton did oversee this economy.