Yes, and....
He inherited a declining economy with very low unemployment and a stock market whose technology component had just lost half its value in ten months (there's a similarlity to Hoover, except the crash happened before Bush got in office);
He took this declining economy and had added to it the economic shocks waves caused by 9/11;
He did exactly what the Keynesian (formerly a Democratic patron saint, but apparently no longer) playbook says you should do under those circumstances, especially while inflation remained low ... he applied heavy fiscal stimulus in the form of a deficit;
The downturn, already underway in the third quarter of 2000 and first quarter of 2001, resulted in a peak unemployment rate of around 6 1/2 percent, the lowest peak unemployment rate of most downturns in postwar (or prewar for that matter) economic history.
It's bogus to say that someone who inherited an economy whose stock market was already a good ways into a crash, then had 9/11 added to it, and still managed to bring unemployment to the point it was when his predecessor ran for reelection, has done the worst economic job since Herbert Hoover. I doubt God or even Mel Gibson could have managed an economy to robust job growth under those conditions.
By the way, the private sector number is higher than the total number of job loss, which is why Bush detractors are using it. It exaggerates the effect, as does concentrating on the number of jobs without regard to the size of the workforce, which was far smaller during past job loss periods.
The fact remains that the market crashed while Hoover was President, not before, and unemployment rose to above 20 percent while Hoover was President, not 5.6 percent. That's not a Depression or the worst economy since Hoover. It's political hyperbole. |
