I’m getting a lot of email along these lines in re: the Dow reaching record territory:

Let see now, the Dow is almost to the highest level it has been since…Clinton was president! Yeah Bush! After five years you have almost reached Clinton’s level!

Me: I haven’t looked, but I’m sure this brilliant analysis can be found on plenty of leftwing blogs. This strikes me as partisan silliness. I have never given Presidents that much credit or blame for the economy. And I’m not going to start now. The idea that Clinton was personally responsible for the stock boom — which got pretty bubbly let us recall — always struck me as absurd. Though he obviously deserved credit for not screwing up a good economy — a power presidents do have. But, after a recession, an overdue market correction, a huge terrorist attack on the heart of our financial sector, wars, oil shocks, hurricanes, various and sundry corporate scandals (most of which took place on Clinton’s watch if we’re keeping score) and a host of technological geopolitical changes we’re supposed to believe that with a different president in office the stock market would have hit record territory a whole lot earlier? Come on.

Others can try to explain why Bush deserves a lot of credit for the economic recovery. I credit the American people and the American economy first, and the political class a distant second. But the Bush-bashers are just too invested in the idea that everything bad is Bush’s fault and that anything good must be minimized and ridiculed.