Presidents and prosperity
Economy did best when Clinton was in office
This is interestesting statistics from Forbes, they have not ranked Bush Jr. yet. But like fater like son, he'll definitely compete for the 10th or 11th slot after his term is due.
"...The death of Ronald Reagan and the popularity of Bill Clinton's book have sparked an unusually intense interest in presidents past.
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During the week of his funeral, several commentators declared Reagan the best president of the 20th century, even better than Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Reagan himself admired. A recent Gallup Organization poll indicates that Americans rank John F. Kennedy slightly ahead of FDR, and both of them ahead of Reagan. Clinton supporters, meanwhile, note that he turned large federal deficits into surpluses and presided over a booming economy...
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It's the kind of argument that will never be settled, like who was a better ballplayer, Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. But we took a look at the numbers, and for the money, among presidents since World War II, Clinton scores highest...
To create our rankings we looked at six measures of economic performance -- GDP growth, per capita income growth, employment gains, unemployment rate reduction, inflation reduction and federal deficit reduction -- for each of the ten postwar presidencies. For each measure we looked at whether the situation improved or got worse, and we ranked the presidents from 1 to 10. We then averaged the ranks to come up with a final score. ..
Rank Presidents and prosperity
Rank President
- Bill Clinton
- Lyndon B. Johnson
- John F. Kennedy
- Ronald Reagan
- Gerald R. Ford
- Jimmy Carter
- Harry S. Truman
- Richard M. Nixon
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- George H. W. Bush
Of the ten postwar presidents, the first President Bush brings up the rear. He ranks dead last for both GDP growth and income growth and also ballooned the deficit at a rate faster than every president but Ford....
Howard Dean was right, if you want to live like a Republican, vote for democrats.