Presidential achievements broken down by party; Found on Facebook

[1monster]

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Hate to play devil's advocate...

but presiding over the dot-com bubble and deregulation of the financial markets isn't exactly an achievement to be proud of. The stock market performed very well in the 1920's, at a time of rising mass investment in new and maturing technologies...home appliances, automobiles, refrigeration, aviation...but then what happened in 1929? The 1990's boom was similar, the stock market would have done very well regardless of who happened to be President because of the rise of investment in new technologies like the Internet, mobile communications, satellite and digital entertainment, and so on. The boom still went bust, and the deregulation contributed substantially to the subsequent economic crisis of 2007-2008. And median real income for men has been flat since 1967; median family income has increased by 25%, largely as a result of women entering the workforce, but the average hourly wage in constant dollars peaked in 1974. Clinton's embrace of Reaganomics and deregulation bear as much responsibility for the economic fuckery of the past four years as Bush does.

[Rex]

3. Actually if you take Reagan, Hoover and Bush II

out of the equation, we would be who knows where right now. Add in JFK not being murdered. All this progress in 50 years, almost all destroyed by 3 POTUSes. We can throw in Nixon I guess too. A lot of the destruction caused by Republican Congresses should never be overlooked either.

All in all, we have a negative sucking factor with Republicans and a slow growing middle class with Democratic leaders.

Now I don't know about you, but I will take something over nothing.

Just to play devil's advocate, advocate.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Hoover left office in March 1933

and as far as that goes Coolidge was probably more responsible for the Depression, with one thing and another. (Which is not in the past 50 years, by the way.)

I'm not entirely sure what progress Clinton made; deregulation? Welfare reform? "most favoured nation" trading status for China? NAFTA? I lived in a small town in Georgia at the time; one of the major local employers was a textile mill...which shut down and moved operations to China in the mid '90's. Overall, there were seven million jobs lost in the Southern textile industry between 1994 and 2003, and all of those job losses can be traced directly to Clinton's economic and trade policies. How this is a good thing, I don't know; I agree that a Republican would have been worse, but the difference is more one of degree than kind.

[zbdent]

7. Oh, wait ... wasn't the talking point about all the "success" of Clinton that

The Republican House and Senate were really the success factors?

Other than signing the bills, then, you can directly thank Repugs for most of the bad stuff, too, that happened under Clinton ...

I remember the Repugs blaming Nancy Pelosi and the Dems for the high gas prices in 2008 ... but the stock market also returned to its status of reaching and setting new highs at that time, too ... forgotten in the rhetoric ...

[NewJeffCT]

10. Several years back, the NY Times had a similar chart

that went back 80 or 85 years that showed very similar results - so, it would have included Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, Truman and Ike. It may have also included Harding and been a post WW1 graph, but I don't recall for sure.

[jeff47]

6. The last 50 years includes Carter

And the last 50 years includes the implosion of the dot-com bubble.

So, that pretty well offsets the outlier of the dot-com bubble.

[NewJeffCT]

9. Carter had a strong job creation record

however, he was dealing with the hangover of the Nixon/Ford years...

[ErikJ]

11. Gore's internet infrastructure laws and Reagan tax cuts

The tech/internet boom had a lot to do with Gore/Clinton Fed. infrastructure investment but the bubble was from Reagan tax cuts on the rich.

Anytime you lower the top rate under 50% you get investor class gambling on Wall Street. Reagan lowered the top rate from 70% to 28% but at least Clinton raised it back up to 39%-but not high enough to prevent stock bubble.

[liberal N proud]

5. K&R

[barbtries]

8. i'm so putting that back on my facebook

it tells a story.

[robinlynne]

12. wow!