‘Presimetrics’ digs into history and records of presidents

Of course, sometimes you could find yourself in the midst of a crowd, seeing things that you pretty much expected.

In writing “Presimetrics,” my co-author and I gathered data from the last 60 years of presidencies, hoping to answer a lot of questions about issues that we think people care about. Which administration oversaw the fastest growth? Which cut the debt most? Who added the most federal employees? Who cut taxes the most?

We looked at social issues, too. Which president oversaw the highest increase in the murder rate? In suicide? In marriage? In the birth of children to unwed mothers?

There are answers to straightforward questions like, say, which administration proportionally added the most spending for the environment. That was Nixon and Ford (surprised?). Or the one who increased Pentagon spending the most? (George W. Bush). Or proportionally cut the most federal employees (did you say Bill Clinton?).

What’s harder to pin down are the slippery ways in which one president’s gutsy decisions might benefit the next one, or how a narrow-minded policy in one administration undercuts results for the next one.

For instance, Clinton cut the budget deficit and left office with a surplus. But how much credit should he share with his predecessor, George H.W. Bush, who politically damaged himself by signing a tax increase?

It’s also tough to quantify the effects of outside forces that the president cannot control.

Oil, for example, has played both economic villain and hero. How much do you blame Nixon for the economic impact of the Arab Oil Embargo? Do you give Carter a pass for impact of the Iranian oil crisis? What about Clinton’s time in the White House — how much must you discount economic growth because of low oil prices?

Situations were different. When John Kennedy took office in 1961, American industry and manufacturing dominated the planet. Fifteen years later, Carter’s America was coping with a foreign assault on the auto industry.

Each president is dealt a different hand.

But if each is given a different set of cards, then it is fair to judge them on how they do with the hands they were dealt. Yes, presidents take too much credit when things go well, too much blame when things go badly. The book is premised on the idea that they deserve some credit and some blame — it is a matter of degree.

As a journalist, I have some obligations: My job is to be fair, to be accurate, to be careful. It is sometimes a challenge to get it right, but that is my job.

But as a journalist, I also have some advantages. Because I am not a partisan, I have the luxury of being able to simply turn up facts and follow them where they lead.

It’s true that sometimes the facts guide you to a conclusion that is pretty much the conventional wisdom.

On military spending, for example:

The biggest increase in defense spending as a share of the budget — an increase of about 2 percent per year — came under George W. Bush. Furthermore, the magnitude of the increase is so big in part because these expenditures followed two administrations that cut military spending as part of the so-called “peace dividend” following collapse of the Soviet Union.

Two wars were launched under Bush: Afghanistan and Iraq.

When it came to the economy, there were some facts that conflicted with the conventional wisdom, or at least the way that our history is recalled.

We recall the mid-1980s and the late 1990s as times of strong growth.

But the Kennedy and Johnson era is remembered for so much turmoil — civil rights laws, assassinations, urban unrest, the war in Vietnam, the protests at home — that we don’t talk much about the 1960s economy.

Maybe we should.

JFK and LBJ together presided over a 3.48 percent annualized growth rate in real GDP per capita. That result was a function of a number of things — some of it was luck, some of it was circumstance and some of it may even have been due to the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. But … Kennedy and Johnson also focused on policies that produced rapid growth. … They were one of only two administrations to show year-after-year growth in real GDP per capita. The second-fastest annualized increase in real GDP per capita — 2.49 percent — occurred during the other administration that produced years-after-year growth in real GDP per capita, that of Bill Clinton. Fast growth is important, of course, but as we Americans learned to our detriment in 2007 and 2008, there are benefits to consistency as well.

Reagan comes in just behind Clinton, but with a growth rate in real GDP per capita of 2.45 percent, so close that you can think of him as tied for second.

Government spending has become an increasingly hot topic this year — enough to potentially shape the November elections.

Except for World War II, the government has never dominated the economy, but it has been a factor for most living Americans.

You’ve never known it as a non-factor, unless perhaps you were born during the Flapper Era…

In 1929, the government spent $21.33 a person. Adjusted for inflation, it’s about $270 in 2008 dollars. But by 2008, government spending per person had increased to about $10,160 per person, an average increase of about 4.7 percent a year.

A better measure might be a comparison of expenditures with GDP; after all, as the country gets wealthier, it can afford greater levels of spending. And since 1929, federal spending as a percentage of the economy has increased, rising from about 2.5 percent of GDP in 1929 to 21.7 percent of GDP in 2008.

One of the apparent lessons from the data is that the economy is like a tide. An awful lot of things get carried along with an economy that is rising fast, just as an ebbing economy lowers a lot of different boats.

And sometimes, social issues seem to be in an entirely different sea.

For instance, Clinton had the smallest increase in the percent of births to unmarried women.

But it couldn’t be all economics: Despite the strong growth of the 1960s, Kennedy and Johnson had the highest increase.

The presidents who enjoyed strong economic growth sometimes reaped benefits in other areas.

The fastest wage growth in real average wage rates occurred under Kennedy/ Johnson and Clinton. During both of these administrations, the economy as a whole grew very quickly.

When Kennedy took office, the minimum wage was set at $1 an hour; when Johnson left office, it was $1.60. So the administration raised the minimum wage 60 percent — 36 percent, adjusted for inflation.

Clinton came in second with wage growth of slightly better than half that of Johnson. George W. Bush was the only other president to preside over an increase in the real wage rate, although he was just barely on the plus side. Bringing up the rear on wage growth was Carter. Inflation was one of the banes of his presidency — real average weekly earnings fell more than 2 percent.

The book was written over several years with some last-minute amendments in early 2010.

That means that it is history, not a real-time read on the current administration. Still, we had some early returns on President Barack Obama’s performance, so we took a crack at a partial judgment.

In that section, written in the winter, we acknowledged that he took office while the economy was in near-freefall. We gave his policies — some of which were carry-overs from the previous administration — credit for arresting that plunge.

But we judged Obama’s policies to be insufficient to juice the economy back into good health and solid growth.

Roughly six or eight months later, that still holds up.

But a glance at history reminds us to be cautious. After a year-and-a-half in office, Reagan was presiding over a struggling economy, rising unemployment and a ballooning deficit.