Economix: Ranking the Presidents by G.D.P.

The revised G.D.P. numbers damage the economic growth numbers for Obama and the George W. Bush administrations.

FLOYD NORRIS

Notions on high and low finance.

There is an element of unfairness in attributing economic growth to a president, of course. The government has limited influence on the economy, and the president can have limited influence on government policy, as anyone watching the current debate in Washington has surely noticed. Normal economic cycles mean that growth is likely to be less impressive for a president who enters office at the end of a boom, as George W. Bush did, and better for one who enters when growth is weak, as Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan did. If normal cyclical factors return, and President Obama has a second term, his record should end up much better than it currently appears. If he loses, he could be like Gerald Ford, who also took office during a deep recession.

With all those caveats, here are the annualized growth rates for real G.D.P. for every president who took office after the end of World War II.

Each president is given credit for growth through the quarter before he left office. For those who left at the end of their terms, that would be the fourth quarter of the election year. For Richard M. Nixon, who resigned during the third quarter of 1974, it is through the second quarter of that year.

Also shown are the figures for Presidents Bush and Obama that would have appeared had the numbers been calculated before today’s announcement of second quarter data and revisions to earlier numbers.

They are listed in reverse order of growth.

Barack Obama, 1.2% annual G.D.P. growth rate (previously 1.5%)
George W. Bush, 1.6% (previously 1.7%)
George H.W. Bush, 2.1%
Gerald Ford, 2.2%
Dwight Eisenhower, 2.5%
Richard Nixon, 3.0%
Jimmy Carter, 3.2%
Ronald Reagan, 3.5%
Bill Clinton, 3.8%
Lyndon B. Johnson, 5.0%
John F. Kennedy, 5.4%

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0eba8cb0a8f85463807cb2b3f6fc2c3e