A lot of the deficit has to do with factors beyond the presidency. Congress, the economic cycle, world events...
If Gore had won, there still would have been large deficits. Possibly smaller than Bush's deficits (and almost certainly smaller than Obama's), but there is no way to really know that they would have been smaller, and they would be very unlikely to be small (unless somehow Gore being elected, resulted in a reaction of electing lots of real fiscal conservatives to congress, which is possible, but not particularly likely, unless he first greatly increased the deficits, which would have made the issue more salient.
Bush's deficits where large, but where not unusually large until after congress was taken over by the Democrats.
Looking at modern American history, the best deficit control is when a Democrat is president, and Republicans control congress. But I don't consider that a very solid point because the sample size is way too small (just a few years for that condition, and not a very large number of post WWII presidencies to count the other possible combinations), and also because parties change and conditions change.
I might have made a more general comment that divided government was good for deficits, but the record on that is mixed. Sometimes you get good results, but Reagan had high deficits with a Democratic, and with a partially Democratic congress, and Bush had high deficits with a Democratic congress. So (if you consider the sample size large enough to have any weight, which I consider dubious), it would seem that perhaps the Republican president, Democratic congress combination isn't so good.
But that's more on partisan issue than I really care for. Whatever party is in control, we have to get a hold on spending. That's the real issue, much more than party comparisons. |
