How did Bill Clinton defeat President Bush #41 only a year after #41’s poll numbers were briefly through the roof after the lighting-quick liberation of Kuwait? The media took a mild recession in 1990/91 and made it out to be The End Of The World–“The worst economy in 50 years”. Bush #41’s raising of taxes, breaking his “read my lips” promise on the campaign trail in 1988 didn’t help matters, and created an atmosphere of distrust that led directly to Ross Perot entering the scene, creating the three-way race that allowed Bill Clinton to win the presidency without a plurality of the vote. Lorie Byrd remembers, as did I, the flipover in economic reporting that happened immediately afterwards:
in 1992…the Bush recovery was described as the worst economy in 50 years until the day after the election, when it became known as the Clinton recovery.
Bush #43 learned from his father’s most obvious economic mistake and has cut taxes, leading to numerous years of ecomomic growth, once the post-NASDAQ bubble and 9/11-related downturn passed. But as Back Talk notes, once again….
You can learn more from a few informative charts than you can from reading the words of a reporter who has an agenda that is advanced, not by showing you the actual numbers, but by using bumper-sticker slogans to create the impression that things are “spiraling out of control.” Oh wait, that’s the phrase reporters use to characterize Iraq. Well, they don’t use charts for that purpose, either (and for the same reason).
Gee, wonder why?
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