Financial Crisis

My daughter asked me to help her study for a high school civics exam this evening. One of the duties of the president was listed as helping the economy to improve. She said that her civics teacher said that "the president really is not able to affect the economy that much." It seems to me that I have heard a number of Republican friends make similar statements. Essentially, the economy was good under Clinton by accident or because of policies set in place by Reagan (!) years before. The economy is not doing as well at the end of Bush's term because of 9-11 and Katrina. This takes some willful suspension of rationality as far as I am concerned. President Bush's policy of not using the surplus he inherited to fund any of the country's long term obligations has helped to put Social Security, for example, in worse shape than it needs to be. His cutting taxes while increasing spending due to two wars while, at the same time, contracting out military duties and paying via credit card definitely contributed to massive deficits that did not have to be there. It seems obvious, which does not make it true, that he directly negatively affected the economy. For that matter, our present mess need not have grown so large as it did. Last year in January and February there were a number of people saying that we were in trouble. He chose to claim everything was great, the fundamentals were sound (repeated by John McCain in the summer) rather than doing anything real to address the situation. When he did finally address the situation it was to give everyone some money and tell them to spend it - had the economy only needed a shot in the arm, maybe that would have worked. Since the economy was heading for a lot more trouble than that it would have been nice if his economic stimulus package had actually done something to help with infrastructure and employment.