list of presidents who would envy the Bush economic record is as follows: 1. Bush I. 2. Nobody

January 28, 2008, 6:30 am | Why doesn’t Bush get economic credit?
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On one side, the Bush economy, even during its good years, wasn’t all that great. I’ve given readers a lot of charts on this; here’s another, the rate of growth of nonfarm payroll employment.





Looking at this, which presidents, exactly, would the Bush economic climate be the envy of? Even at its best, the Bush economy failed to deliver employment growth comparable to that under earlier presidents. And the Bush economy spent very little time at its best. Only Gerald Ford and Bush the elder failed to deliver performance better than the current occupant of the White House.(Jimmy Carter simply had the misfortune to have a recession at the end of his tenure.)
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Update: Dean Baker had the same reaction. He uses GDP growth rates and lumps Nixon-Ford together, so that his list of presidents who would envy the Bush economic record is as follows: 1. Bush I. 2. Nobody.

Update 2: Ezra Klein makes it into a nice chart.

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