Performances on the economy by party

by cactus

Presidential performance by party can be explored here in book form in the near future we all hope.

And before anything else, lets cover the excuses that come up time and again… Its not that Republicans inherit problems from Democratic administrations –even leaving out the first two years of each administration, growth is quite a bit faster under Democratic Presidents. It’s not control of Congress – growth is faster under Democratic Congresses than under Republican Congresses. It also is not the case that Democrats are elected when times are good and Republicans are elected when times are bad. And lags don’t explain it either. Its not the Fed – among Democratic Presidents, only JFK/LBJ got more favorable monetary policy than Republican Presidents, and Carter and Clinton were treated much more shabbily than Republican administrations.I think that covers all the excuses I’ve seen before… for growth.

I’m not sure what excuses one might come up with to explain away the massive run-up of debt under some Republican Presidents.What’s left? Well, its possible I made a mistake with the numbers. You’re welcome to check ’em – the original sources of the data for each series are provided in the posts to which I linked above, and as regular readers know, I tend to go the true original source of the data where I can – the BEA for real GDP per capita, the Treasury or the OMB for debt, etc. And if there’s no mistake? Well then…

(compiled and edited by rdan for this post)

Update: I cannot expand the originals in blogger without blurring numbers and letters. Perhaps cactus has better originals.