The Bush Presidency

With the opening of the Presidential Library for President George W Bush, there has been a lot of examination as to how good a President he was.  This is a cogent but unflattering summary of Bush's record by Jonathan Chait. This is an article by Dylan Matthews that examines the Bush Presidency in charts.

I was a bit disappointed because the charts, while interesting, did not quite show the impact of the Bush Presidency.  Here are some other charts that may help clear some of the questions:

1.  When Bush took the reigns of power, US public debt as a percentage of GDP was actually falling.  During his term in office not only did he reverse the trend but by 2009 he basically had created a situation where the country was forced to go into massive debt.

2.  Bush expanded federal spending at rates that far outstripped inflation.

3.  As you can see below, he grew both defense and non defense spending.

4.  Real household income under him stagnated and fell:

5.  He also oversaw a period of effective stagnation in the market as evidenced by the S&P 500:

This is the same chart plotted on a logarithmic scale:

6.  And oversaw the largest increase in unemployment in recent memory:

Then there is the $4T he spent on wars.  The fact that at least one of the wars was purportedly because of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be false.  There is the complete debacle of his handling of Katrina.

It is possible that in hindsight, a lot of the messes will look less of an issue, especially if the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and we get back on track to growth.  His unfunded Medicare Part D will be dwarfed by Obamacare.  And, he may seem prescient on his prediction that democracy will spread through the Middle East.  He may even get credit for trying on immigration and lauded for his work on education, and aid to Africa and for Aids etc.  On the other hand, there is a good chance that other aspects such as torture, Guantanamo Bay, his being asleep at the wheel on climate change, etc. may prove to be much worse than they seem now.

It's hard to know what history will say, but its hard to argue that he did not leave the country in disarray when he left office.