Brilliant Politics

USA Today has a very useful Presidential Approval Tracker, which provides data on Barack Obama and every other president since Harry Truman.  The interactive features allow you to compare two presidents and to get poll results for specific dates.  If you are worrying about Obama’s declining approval ratings, keep in mind that Bill Clinton’s approval rating in June of 1993 was 37%, and that Ronald Reagan’s approval rating in January of 1983 was 35%.

These are data points from public opinion polls about the economy. Fewer people are feeling pessimistic, and more people are feeling optimistic, about the economy since George W. Bush left office and Barack Obama became president.

Since Barack Obama took offfice in late January 2009, the net change in GDP is +9.9%.  In 2008, with George W. Bush as president, the net change in GDP was -4.7%; and if you count from best quarter to last quarter in 2008, it was-6.9%. Chart is from White House Council of Economic Advisors.

The chart makes clear that it is too early to judge Obama on the percentage increase in national debt relative to GDP. But it is easy to see the record of his predecessors.

Matthew Yglesias articulates one of the cold hard facts about American conservatives:

The presence of a major ideological movement in the United States of America dedicated to the dual propositions that taxes must never go up, and that government expenditures don’t need to relate to government revenue in any real way as long as the Republican Party is in charge simply makes it almost impossible for the country to be governed in a responsible manner.