Grasping for something good to say about George Bush, George Will is the latest to trot out the truism that Republican policies are good for the economy. Trouble is, history shows the truism ain't true. In fact, Democratic administrations bring more - and healthier - prosperity.
As Kevin Drum wrote in the Washington Monthly of May 9, 2005:
"Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There's just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations." (Read the story at http://tinyurl.com/...
It's not just Drum who finds this: so do multiple studies by journalists and academics. Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels found that unemployment was "30 percent lower under Democratic presidents, on average and GDP growth [was] 30 percent higher under Democratic presidents, on average." (Download the study from http://tinyurl.com/...
Princeton's Bartels did find that Republican administrations do a better job making the rich richer: "Republican presidents have produced a great deal more income growth for rich families than for poor families."
One of the marketing accomplishments of the modern Republican Party has been to convince some ordinary Americans that this situation is somehow good for them. The Bush administration has pushed the campaign to an extreme, apparently trying to convince us that the point of capitalism is to loot and squander the public treasury, no matter the cost to America and the health of our democracy.