This forum has documented past efforts to compare the 44th and 40th presidents. But the latest Bloomberg Businessweek attempts to explain away President Obama’s inability to emulate Ronald Reagan’s efforts to boost the American economy.
President Barack Obama’s recession is a lot more complicated than the one Reagan tussled with in 1981.
Superficially, their predicaments are similar. Both presided over economic downturns considered to be the worst since the Great Depression. They lost congressional support in midterm elections and were presiding over economic recoveries as they geared up for reelection campaigns.
Now the differences. The economy surged under Reagan. Gross domestic product in the final three months of 1983 rose at an annualized 8.5 percent. For Obama, the economic engine is running much more slowly. He narrowly avoided a double-dip recession in mid-2011, and growth accelerated in the fourth quarter to a 2.8 percent rate—the fastest the country experienced in 18 months. The unemployment rate in December 2011 was 8.5 percent, vs. 8.3 percent in December 1983. Yet joblessness 29 years ago dropped 2.5 percentage points in just 12 months, compared with a decline of less than 1 percentage point in 2011.
Obama has struggled to master a far more complex situation.
Struggled, perhaps, because he doesn’t support the types of economic policies that would foster growth and focuses instead on counterproductive ideas like “taxing the rich.”