In case you missed it yesterday, the incomparable Michael Kinsley had a valuable observation in the Washington Post yesterday.
Apparently, after realizing that the Dems’ convention wasn’t going to offer him a lot of fodder for his column, Kinsley decided to take a close look at the charts attached to the President’s Economic Report — which included data from 1960 to 2002 — to see if one party was more successful in handling economic affairs.
Considering the relative equity among the parties over that period, it’s a pretty good sample. Over those 42 years, we’ve had 20 years of a Dem president and 22 years of a Republican. What Kinsley found — surprise, surprise — is that Dems have had much more success in economic affairs.
[Dems] win a head-to-head comparison in almost every category. Real growth averaged 4.09 percent in Democratic years, 2.75 percent in Republican years. Unemployment was 6.44 percent on average under Republican presidents and 5.33 percent under Democrats. The federal government spent more under Republicans than Democrats (20.87 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 19.58 percent), and that remains true even if you exclude defense (13.76 for the Democrats; 14.97 for the Republicans).
What else? Inflation was lower under Democratic presidents (3.81 percent on average, compared with 4.85 percent). And annual deficits took more than twice as much of GDP under Republicans as under Democrats (2.74 percent versus 1.21 percent). Republicans won by a nose on government revenue (i.e., taxes), taking 18.12 percent of GDP compared with 18.39 percent. That, of course, is why they lost on the size of the deficit. Personal income per capita was also a bit higher in Republican years ($16,061) than in Democratic ones ($15,565). But that is because more of the Republican years came later, when the country was more prosperous already.
He forgot to mention that the stock market also does significantly better under Dem presidents.
In fact, Kinsley thought it might be even more helpful to consider just the period since Reagan took office, since, as he put it, that’s when the “Republican Party considers itself born,” and starting pursuing the modern-day GOP approach to economic affairs (trickle down) in earnest. Were the results any better?
But doing all the same calculations for the years 1982 through 2002, and giving each president’s policies a year to take effect, changes only one result: The Democrats pull ahead of the Republicans on per capita personal income.
I realize this information isn’t exactly empirical evidence of Dem superiority, but I consider data like this helpful in arguments with Republican family members, neighbors, etc. Something to file away for future use.