Scrat wrote:A) As I've pointed out repeatedly, you've offered us nothing upon which to base any claims about his performance. You may have given us reason to praise Bush I and to criticize Clinton, though I don't think the picture is as simple as you wish to paint it to be.
Keltic has done a very effective job at highlighting how employment indicators under eight Clinton years have been much better than during the tenures of either of the Bushes.
You have raised the valid point that employment is a lagging indicator, and that to some extent that means that today's numbers reflect yesterday's policies rather than today's.
Thomas has explained that employment rates are indeed generally considered to be lagging indicators - and that the lag in question is assumed to be about half a year to a year. That means that Bush I could have been credited for the first year or so of the rise in employment under Clinton - but hardly for the next seven years.
He asked you how you define the lagging in question, but although you suggest ever again that
if anything, the full eight years of the sunny Clinton-era employment numbers should be credited to Bush I, you have demurred from backing up an actual argument that any serious economist does indeed take empoyment rates to be a lagging indicator by up to eight years. I doubt you will find one.
I actually agree with you that a sitting President can only to a limited extent be credited for
any economic turn. The nineties were booming times everywhere, regardless of who governed. The time around 1990-1991 were bad times everywhere, under left- and right-wing governments.
Still, a government can certainly negatively impact a general trend or positively encourage it. In the nineties, the boom was significantly stronger in the Netherlands than in Germany, and this can be considered a credit to the "purple" governments here and a reproach to the Kohl and Schroeder governments there.
Clinton's US certainly did as well as any Western country that decade; if anything, it did better.
That means that at the very least, he can be credited for apparently not having done anything to mess it up for up to six-seven years - and note, that's even if one
does blame him for the upturn in unemployment directly after his term. After all: unemployment is considered a lagging indicator by about half a year to a year, so that would be about the extent Clinton can be blamed for post-2000 developments - unless you want to make an actual argument about the lagging being a much longer-term thing after all.
(Gee, Laura Bush used to teach English... that must prove that Dubya is adept with the language!) ;-)
