Elf Sternberg

My point here-- and Omaha made the same point the other day (here (http://elfs.livejournal.com/873006.html?thread=4491310#t4491310))-- is that the data do not show that Democratic (or Republican) presidencies are correlated with robustness in the economy. Both major parties are fully capable of being frugal or extravagant depending on public opinion at the time.

The fact that economists can't reach a consensus in this case isn't surprising; economics isn't a science yet. What's more telling to me is that any given economist (or layperson) will usually have some explanation to offer whether or not they really understand the situation.

But I think I can offer some observations that aren't particularly controversial.

Republicans traditionally get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to controlling government spending, but that presumption works against us when one comes along who isn't so thrifty, like the current President Bush. Voters suppose that if a Republican is willing to go along with heavy spending by Congress, there must be a good reason for it, even though there usually isn't. (But sometimes there is; Reagan's deal with Congress for temporarily increased military spending at the cost of temporarily increased social spending is the clearest example in my lifetime.)

Conversely, when we find a Democratic president who's willing to help reduce government spending, we're all happy about it; Clinton is the most obvious example of this. Now, I think Clinton started his campaign planning to increase spending in various areas-- certainly his wife did-- but voters made it clear that isn't what they wanted. Clinton listened, made the promises we wanted to hear, and then actually kept them. The result was striking, as we see in this chart from good ol' Ross Perot:

(http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges-charts/page/9/)

You can claim that Clinton deserves the credit for this result. Republicans attribute it to the trend toward conservativism that resulted in their Contract with America and Republican majorities in Congress for the last six years of the Clinton administration.

I think that both parties were really just complying with the demands of the electorate. And that begs the question, what influenced those demands? Well, when it comes to fiscal conservativism, it certainly isn't the Democratic Party providing the inspiration.

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