1 - "Post WWII", means your ignoring the president who increased deficits the most, FDR. (And yes he had good reason for the huge deficits of WWII, but still its convenient to start the count just after the biggest deficit increaser of the deficit.
2 - Just considering who is president, ignores congress.
3 - It ignores negative conditions that the previous president and congress left for their successor (for example inflation tends to be higher when Democrats are in charge, if Republican presidents help squash the inflation, they will temporarily slow economic growth. Government revenue will temporarily go down from the lower economic growth, and also go down to to less of an "inflation tax", from seniorage, and bracket creep, and inflating away debt. Look at when recent Republicans have taken over from a Democrat. Nixon took over after the LBJ helped set up up for inflation (not that Nixon did well with economic policy, quite the opposite), Reagan took over having to deal with inflation and other problems from the 70s), Bush II took over early in a recession, after the collapse of the tech bubble.
3 - It also ignores other factors besides the current president, all sorts of non-government (or in some cases foreign government) factors that effect our economy.
4 - It ignores an effective time lag before a president's policies can be enacted, and then another time lag from "enacted" to "in effect", and then another one from "in effect" to "have a serious impact".
5 - Its only one issue being measured, and while its not an unimportant one, I wouldn't use the budget balance as the sole or overriding criteria in which to consider presidencies, or even just their fiscal and economic policies.
6 - Ignoring Obama who's going to be the biggest spender and deficit creator ever (nominal terms or real terms) or at least biggest since WWII (as a percentage of GDP, and maybe you can shift that to biggest ever if we have a double dip on this recession)
7 - You have a very small sample, and that even within this small sample there is no consistent Republican or Democratic economic policy.
Also see
Message 25968627
Message 25780095
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