Presidents get too much credit and blame for an economy as if it turns on a dime the moment they are elected.  The right want to credit Trump for the sharp rise since he was elected, but attributes no credit to Obama for the long rise during his tenure.  In both cases there is more to the story.

Kevin Williamson writes in The National Review,  Of Presidents and Economies:

Presidents are one small piece of the public-policy picture — and public policy as a whole is only a small part of what shapes and moves a complex modern economy. We tend toward a destructively immature and ahistorical view: The regulatory reforms that made the Internet boom of the Clinton years began decades before; the confluence of terrible policies that created the subprime meltdown and financial crisis of 2008–09 began in the 1930s, with housing and banking reforms and regulatory development occurring under presidents and Congresses of both parties in ways that would frustrate any intellectually rigorous attempt at laying blame on a partisan basis. The Asian currency crisis of the Clinton years, Communist aggression and Mideast conflict in Eisenhower’s time, the terrorist attacks during George W. Bush’s first year in office: None of these was the result of some decision taken in the White House. George W. Bush wanted to be a school reformer and economic booster, not a president overseeing a long and thankless campaign against distant desert savages. But history doesn’t wait for anybody to vote on it. That affects everything, including the economy.

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