New York Times Death Spiral Watch: Sheryl Gay Stolberg Edition

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?

Comments

[CMike]

Does anyone know the ratio between public and private sector jobs that have been created during the Bush II presidency? (and other presidencies?)

[anne]

C Mike

"Does anyone know the ratio between public and private sector jobs that have been created during the Bush II presidency? (and other presidencies?)"

Interesting question that I will look to, but I know that where 225,000 jobs a month were created for the 8 years of the Clinton Administration, the finest 52 months of the Bush Administration have averaged 160,000 jobs. Quite a difference.

[andres]

Er, George W. Bush's growth record would actually be the envy of Herbert Hoover and Benjamin Harrison. Dean Baker should give the man some credit ;-)

[Gene O'Grady]

I saw that one in the paper, couldn't believe it, and assumed that Professor Delong would leave it alone -- too close to shooting carp in a barrel!

I have a question -- in terms of continuity of economic policy, wouldn't it make more sense to lump Bush I and Reagan, thus putting Dubya at the bottom of the heap where he belongs?

[bigTom]

I seem to recall a few years where Europe was struggling and the US economy was doing relatively well. That probably set the tone for having an enviable economy. Of course it was built on an unsustainable housing bubble, and magic money in the form of subprime consumer lending. The real trick was to pass an onerous consumer bankruptcy law, then let wall street make hay lending at high interest rates to sub-prime borrowers, who it was assumed could not default because of the seriously raised price of bankruptcy. Wait until 2008 is over and then rerun the numbers, I'm sure the Bush-II bar will be a lot shorter.

[walkingtheline]

Loved the "balanced" treatment of Bruce B. as a "critical" economist.

[Craig Nelson]

Is it odd that Stolberg receives econ advice from Bruce Bartlett and not from Paul Krugman? She cites Bartlett twice, Krugman not once. Bartlett free lances infrequent op-eds to the NYT; Krugman reports twice a week on the editorial page and posts often to his NYT blog. Bartlett can't seem to get regular employment as an economist outside of right-wing thimk tanks, and Krugman is esteemed as an economist. So how dysfunctional are Stolberg's communication channels? And her editors? And her editors? Can incompetence explain?

[Charles]

Even making allowances that Stolberg is using the Republican definition of "people" as "people making over a million a year," this is pretty bad. Making money in the market has not exactly been easy. If you bought and held SPYs just before Dubya's inauguration, you have made just about exactly nothing to date.

My stock answer to Republicans who wonder why they don't get credit for the wonderful economies their presidents create is, "Yes, it was all great and it just cost _____ trillion to do it," where the blank is filled in with the debt their hero created. If America falls, it will be because Republicans bankrupted her.

[John Horowitz]

The numbers overstate growth during the Bush II years. If I ran a huge deficit, it would look like I had high income too! Just another point that Stolberg missed.

[William Smith]

One of Klein's commenters also noted that both the Washington Post and NY Times used almost the exact same line, "For years, President Bush and his advisers expressed frustration that the White House received little credit for the nation's strong economic performance because of public discontent about the Iraq war." Seems weird unless both sternographers were quoting the same WH Staff...

[kharris]

Oh, I like William's observation.

Reports are welcomed into a comfortably appointed office and asked to sit. "OK, take this down..."

Sure saves effort.

[Prairie Sage]

Come now, real GDP would be better when you bring Nixon and Carter into the mix.

[Charles]

Prairie Sage, the figures look like real GDP to me. You can, of course, look at the tables at BEA if you doubt that.

[A-ro]

It is real GDP. He uses the quarterly real GDP numbers available here:
http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls

That spreadsheet is linked from here:
http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

[Michael Carroll]

Quick! Someone lump all the Republicans in one bar and all the Democrats in the other and sent out a press release!

[dilbert dogbert]

An off topic technical questions for computer geeks here: I use Firefox on both the Wxp and the G5. They render the table differently. FF on Wxp shows it as the good prof wants it and the FF on G5 overlays the grey background on top the table, but offset a bit. My problem? or G5 problem?

[airth10]

"Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

I really don't understand the relevance of that statement to the following article. Is it that the 'regular' press corps did make light of this issue? However, Krugman did!

[dilbert dogbert]

Please ignore my stupid question above. I think it is the Belkin switch between the Wxp and the G5 screwing with the graphics.
Sorry.

[Joe]

I think a better measure of GDP growth during a Presidency would be growth at a lag. My thinking is that the impact of a government's policies on the economy would probably be long term, not felt the day a government takes office. Similarly, the effects of good policies would linger. So, I took some GDP numbers from this site http://eh.net/hmit/gdp/ and ran the GDP growth for Democrat and Republican Presidents at a two-year lag (Example: Reagan/Bush I would be 83 to 94).

Real GDP Per Capita
Truman* 1.74% -0.55%
Eisenhower 3.93% 1.76%
Kennedy/Johnson 4.86% 3.31%
Nixon Ford 4.12% 2.76%
Carter 0.87% -0.20%
Reagan/Bush 4.25% 2.75%
Clinton 3.53% 2.14%
Bush II** 3.16% 2.10%

*For Truman I used the longer period of 1945-1954, but one should probably discount these numbers because of the post WW2 fluctuations.
**Through 2006