Some questionable trade decisions aside, Bill's administration did an amazing job with the economy so I really do like this. My parents have a high opinion of Bill regardless of the scandal because the 90's were actually pretty good years.
Yep. Jeb likes to talk about 4% growth and everyone makes fun of him because it's so pie in the sky (we're around 2-2.5% growth annually under Obama, excluding the -2% growth in 2009) but Clinton's numbers were pretty consistently above 4%. I think his worst year was 2.7%, still on par with Obama's best.
Reagan was also pretty good, around 3-4% notwithstanding the -2% of the 1982 recession and the 7% of the 1984 bounce-back.
W had three years in the 1s, a few 2-3 years in the mid-2000s and the horror of 2008-2009.
HW's took us from the high 3s to 1s and negative numbers.
No wonder nobody trusted Jeb lol
Exactly - what a lot of the establishment GOP failed to recognize is that Americans really don't buy the traditional GOP economic orthodoxy - deregulation, across-the-board tax cuts, and free trade - after the Bush 2 years. I tend to think that those policies were good in the 1980's but have outlived their shelf life. Bush needed to change course at some point, and it's regrettable he didn't. I'm not a fan of everything Trump does, but I do think that restricting immigration, renegotiating trade deals, and taking a softer line on taxes (and supporting financial regulation) is definitely the path the GOP needs to take going forward (though perhaps more pro-immigration).
