Which president did what in the last 25 years?

Great Debates
1

OK, first off, a few disclaimers:
disclaimer #1 I really don’t know anything about politics. I hear one politician talk and I say “Yeah that sounds good” and then I hear another and think “Sure, that’s reasonable” and basically anyone who sounds intelligent and articulate and can manipulate statistics at just the right angle can have me believing anything. I’m generally an idealist, which frustrates the hell out of a political conversation.

disclaimer #2 I wasn’t sure which forum to put this. I have a question, but no preference for a particular side of the fence on which the answer may fall, so it may seem like this belongs in GQ. But I can’t see this being answered without a huge debate, so I put it in here. I trust the mods will deal with it as they see fit.

disclaimer #3 I haven’t done much research on my own. I wouldn’t even know where to start if I wanted to. There’s just too much.

So here it is: my father, an obvious republican was just explaining to me that Carter got this country in a depression, Reagan got us out of it with his brilliant trickle down stuff, we then went into a recession at the end of the 80’s, but we were clearly out of the recession by the time Clinton took office. He says that Clinton did absolutely nothing at all in his entire time as president, that there was absolutely no need to get rid of the national debt since it wasn’t a particularly bad thing, just a matter of some money moving in while some other money was moving out.

I was under the impression that Clinton was responsible for booming economy of the 90’s, and that it was Reagan who got us into that recession.

My father says that everyone in the 80’s was making money, from the rich to the upper and lower middle class and the only ones who didn’t benefit much (though still benefited a little) were the unskilled labor class.

So can anyone break it down for me? Who really was responsible for what? Who was good, and for whom were they good? Who did the damage? Who did nothing?

** additional disclaimer** if this is covered in another thread, and I’m sure it is, I’d appreciate it if you point me there.

2

Moe, I hate to break it to you, but your father is on drugs.

3

The recession of the 70s started in '73 under Nixon. We got out of that one, but another hit when Ford was president. (Anybody still have a WIN button.) We got out of that one and a third one hit when Carter was president. We got out of that one and a fourth recession came when Reagan was president. After the Reagan recession, though, did come the Reagan economic boom.

How much did each president contribute to the economy? I don’t think even Cecil could answer that question. The government controls a lot of spending in this country, and how that money is spent does have an impact on the economy, but there are more factors in what makes the economy work than in what makes weather happen, and we all know how good meteorologists are at their jobs.

If you really want to piss off your father, though – and what good son wouldn’t – tell him that the Keynsian economic theory (the one the Democrats like and the Republicans hate) says that it’s federal deficits that make the economy work better, and that Reagan had the biggest deficits in the history of this country, so that’s what made the economy work so well while he was president.

4

Counterpoint: What brought us out of that depression was not an increase in government spending but suppy side tax cuts. When Reagan first entered office and his campaign promises were still fresh in his mind, he did manage to make the country’s largest ever percentage cut in nondefense spending by cutting the budget by 15% during the 97th congress. After his reelection, he managed only a 2% cut and the budget has continued to increase except for the 104th after the Contract with America.
(http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-375es.html)

Not to hijack (who am I kidding?), but what does everbody else here think of The Contrct with America?

5

I’m sorry 3mae, but tax cuts do not improve the economy all that much. The big cut was in 1986, but the economy did not start booming until the early 1990’s. Now, it was starting to go up during Bush’s term, but it really improved during Clintons terms. I do not know how much the Clinton admin did to boost the economy, but I can tell you if the economy had been terrible, it would have been “his fault”.

6

Let’s also remember that there’s often a delay factor between the time a President (or Congress) enacts a policy, and the time that a recession (or boom) hits. Is Clinton responsible for the last few years of economic boom? Or were those the ripples from Reagan/Bush politics? Or was it simply the amazing onrush of technological improvements?

So, lesson one about politics: the person who is in office claims responsibility for anything good that happened during his administration and blames anything bad on his evil predecessor or on Congress controlled by the opposite party. The person who is out of office blames everything bad that happens on the person who is in office, and looks back nostalgically to the Golden Age of Happiness and Prosperity and Bliss when his party was last in power.

Politics thrives on over-simplification and finding someone to blame. Any time you hear a statement about a simple cause-and-effect for an obviously complex process, you should be suspicious. And especially so if that simple cause-and-effect is ultimately just finger-pointing and finding a scape-goat.

7

It’s kind of hard to credit a president for economic issues, since budgets and tax laws are really drawn up by Congress rather than presidents. The only way you could really claim a President was effective in affecting the economy would be by use of the bully pulpit.

In this regard, I’d say Reagan was the only president who stands out. He was clearly the driving force behind the tax cuts of the 1980’s and (presumably) the economic boom that followed. Control of Congress didn’t change hands when he came into office, so the factor that changed such laws from Carter’s time to Reagan’s almost had to have been Reagan.

threemae:

What’s the matter, you can’t find the “new topic” button? You found the “post reply” button easily enough. Come on. Sometimes hijacks flow from the initial debate, but this one’s major off-topic. Do us all the favor of making it a separate topic, if it’s an issue you really want to debate.

8

CK, I was waiting for that type of response. I kind of thought it ridiculous as I was writing the OP to expect a simple breakdown of who is really responsible for the economy.

So I’ll try to focus on more specific issues. Was the national debt harmful or bad in any way? Could we have simply ignored it and continued on indefinitely while maintaining economic stability, or would it have had to bite us in the ass eventually? Because intuitively, it just don’t seem like a good thing, But what the hell do I know?

9

Are we going to talk about the Bretton Woods agreement at some point? More Nixon-stomping is always fun.