On Blaming Bush - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

On Blaming Bush - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com: "On Blaming Bush

Jonathan Chait has an item about the largely successful attempt not just to blame Obama for our current economic difficulties, but to “socially stigmatize” anyone who points out that most of the blame actually lies with his predecessor. Indeed. And may I point out that the sainted Reagan was still very much blaming Jimmy Carter for the economy’s troubles well past this point in his administration? (Not to mention that circa 2004 the Bushies were still trying to get the NBER to postdate the beginning of the 2001 recession back to Clinton.)

What Chait doesn’t point out, however, is that the idea that enough time has passed that we can’t blame Bush is especially wrong-headed given the nature of our problems. We’re in the aftermath of a financial crisis — and there’s overwhelming evidence (pdf) that recovery from financial crises is almost always protracted and difficult. There’s no way one should have expected everything to be fine until the Lehman failure lies years in the past. In fact, the return of job growth we’ve already seen is ahead of schedule compared with the historical average.

And one thing is clear: the financial crisis occurred on Bush’s watch. To demand that everyone let Bush off the hook for where we are now because 16 months have passed under his successor is to defy the overwhelming evidence of history.

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