Apparently, Clinton gets too much credit for good economy of 1990s

[amandabeech]

4. Clinton was fortunate enough to win the Presidency just before the tech bubble took off,

and took the stock market with it.

Widespread use of computers and the internet in everyday business and personal life was something really, really new then. Of course, now it's old hat.

Clinton and Gore encouraged and supported use of the internet, but they did not create it, and it would have happened to any president who could step back and let it happen. Of course, the Shrub might have been able to do something dopey to mess things up.

On the other hand, the stock market reacted as it has done to new things ever since the Tulip Bulb Mania several centuries ago. It way overshot the current time value of internet and computer stocks. Stock was coming on the market based only on someone's day dream and some money from venture capitalists. And, as usual, there was outright fraud in internet stocks. So much so that some fraudulent operations were hit by SEC "SWAT Squads."

What ever goes up in the stock market often comes down, at least some. Although the Dow and the S&P are up, the stocks that comprise these two measures keep changing. The poor performers are tossed out and good performers are added. The NASDAQ market, tough, has not regained the heights that it hit in early 2000. It is filled with tech stocks that soared so high and then feel to earth.

In sum, Clinton was very lucky to become President when he did, as far as the stock market was concerned.

Call me a braindead Re-pube, but I was there, worked for tech companies, and watched Alan Greenspan call the whole tech bubble "irrational exuberance."

I wish that I could say that Bill Clinton and Al Gore made the tech bubble happen, but in all honesty, I can't.