Were Democrats Actually Listening to What Clinton Said? - Clive Crook - The Atlantic - 1 views
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reporters at Bloomberg examined Clinton's arresting claim about employment growth under Republican and Democratic administrations--since 1961, 24 million jobs added under Republican presidents, 42 million under Democrats--and found it to be true.
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it's obvious that performance follows policy with a lag. You wouldn't think Democrats would need reminding of this. As they rightly point out, it's ridiculous to blame Obama for the collapsing economy he inherited. If you're going to make even a semi-serious attempt to work out whether Democratic or Republican presidents are better for employment, you have to take account of the conditions presidents acquire from their predecessors.
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In 2008 Larry Bartels's book Unequal Democracy tried to do this and did in fact find that growth, employment and economic equality all saw bigger improvements under Democratic administrations. Bartels considered the effect of lags. But he didn't do it very well, according to James Campbell, who critiqued that work last year:
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Once lagged economic effects are taken into account, party differences in economic performance are shown to be the effects of economic conditions inherited from the previous president and not the consequence of real policy differences. Specifically, the economy was in recession when Republican presidents became responsible for the economy in each of the four post-1948 transitions from Democratic to Republican presidents. This was not the case for the transitions from Republicans to Democrats. When economic conditions leading into a year are taken into account, there are no presidential party differences with respect to growth, unemployment, or income inequality.