Sheryl Gay Stolberg badly needs to go back to school and be retrained for another career--but for what? What profession would possibly benefit?
Her lead this morning:
Echo of First Bush: Good Economy Turns Sour - New York Times: Will George W. Bush be remembered as the president who lost the economy while trying to win a war? Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents. Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it...
Outsourced to Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, and Ezra Klein:
Why doesnt Bush get economic credit?: Today’s Times asserts as fact: "Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents. Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it, in large part because Americans were consumed by the war in Iraq."... [This] is a theory, not a fact. And the evidence suggests that this theory is wrong.
On one side, the Bush economy, even during its good years, wasn’t all that great.... 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....
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.... Ezra Klein makes it into a nice chart.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
