Bush economy historically bad, in case you were wondering

In case you weren't swayed by the shoe leather you're boiling to eat, some nice economists got together and added up a bunch of numbers and then compared them to other numbers and came to one shocking conclusion: the Bush economy has been an exploding hellstorm of misery and despair. By the way, that's a technical term.

President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges.

The number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush's tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans' incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush's father.

Now these numbers only go back seven decades, so it's not a complete picture of failure. Who knows, maybe Zachary Taylor, James Polk, or Grover Cleveland (the second time) presided over worse economies. We'll never know, for some reason they didn't keep extensive GDP records or employment statistics or have electric/polio medicine. But at least he'll have a conversation starter with his father other than "I don't think James Cromwell looked or acted much like you in W". He can start right off with "Isn't it funny how our two Presidencies were the worst for American workers in decades? I wonder how that happened." before then switching the conversation to baseball.

So now we're getting the full picture. Not just bad in a "I kinda don't like the guy and feel this has been a shitty eight years." But bad in a numbers, maths+science, doctorate, slide rule, official looking podiums, men with glasses, lab coat, official kind of way. Now we know for sure it wasn't a mass hallucination/bad dream.