I'll save the thread from tired attack-dog points!
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Originally Posted by BAILOPAN
Actually, it usually has different effects. There are a couple of issues to take into account here. "Republican economics" as you call them are generally considered "Reaganomics" of which the ideals have lasted ever since the party adopted Reagan as their hero. Reaganomics had great economic policy and poor fiscal policy - good effects on the economy, bad effects on the government's money.
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What do you consider to be good effects on the economy? If by sheer Keynesian spending on national defense, Reagan helped the US economy, then yes, I guess you're right.
In the long term, however, government deficits raise the national debt, which in turn raises the cost of borrowing for the government. That, in turn, leads to interest rate hikes, which
then slows the economy back down.
So I would argue Reaganomics is bad all-around, unless you're looking for a short-term economic increase due to massive government spending pumping cash into the economy.
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Originally Posted by BAILOPAN
However, it should be considered a fact that the president must do a great deal to affect any system so complex and variable as the economy or stock market. To say one person influences this is ridiculous - usually economic policy is the by product of a situation already in place.
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True, but the enormity of Bush's tax cuts coupled with $200+ billion in Iraq is Reaganomics redux. Sure, the Democrats might be tax-and-spend, but the Republicans are dont-tax-and-still-spend, and I seriously doubt that position is defensible.
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Originally Posted by BAILOPAN
For example, during Clinton's administration there was a surplus. He was correcting the imbalances made by Reagan during the Cold War. Yet - the economy continued to grow as it did during the Reagan administration; before it came crashing down during the dot com boom which fed into Bush's administration.
What's my point? The economy is both cyclical and variant. It is impossible to predect and what can be claimed as the direct result may actually be the result of thousands of variables that aggregated over time. The seeming failures of one situation can be attributed to the actual failures of another deemed as a success - in this case, you could say the economy under Bush was Clinton's fault.
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You are right on one count - the dot-com bust was NOT Bush's fault, and most likely the seeds for it were planted in Clinton's final months. But that's hardly a defense of Bush's economic policy.
I still contend that Bush's combination of tax cuts (that largely affected people who will hoard that cash, not spend it) with massive government spending will simply raise interest rates without stimulating the economy as much as 1992-93, when we recovered from Bush the Elder's economic slowdown. (I'm not saying Clinton was wholly responsible for this recovery - I agree it was more of a cyclical scenario.)
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Originally Posted by BAILOPAN
The tax cuts indeed put money in the hands of people - my dad is single and raises three kids and got a decent check, which he was glad to get.
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Not sure if you will dispute this, so I won't bother to Google up some statistics, but a staggering amount of that money went to the richest people, who have enough disposable income as it is. Giving them more won't make them spend it, which is what would be helpful to the economy.
More to the topic at hand, I think it's such an incredible stretch to even say the debate was a draw. Kerry dominated Bush in the debates, keeping Bush perpetually on the defensive and forcing him into uncomfortable positions in which Bush could do nothing but repeat his (often untopical) mantra, "mixed messages."
Bush repeatedly scowled, paused blankly, and blinked uncontrollably during the latter half of the debate. He was so rattled that his closing statement, which obviously, for both candidates, was a carefully rehearsed statement, didn't come close to the 2 minute limit (indicating that he forgot a good chunk of it, since there's no way he would have purposefully not used his full allotment of time). Kerry, I might add, perfectly maxed out his 2 minute limit.
Don't believe me? Even
many right-wing pundits grudgingly admitted Bush was nowhere near as effective as Kerry, and the polls bear this out too.
The main thing is, Bush had 4 years to make his case to undecided voters. If they're still undecided, it must be because something about his message isn't working. The solution is either to change the message or hope that the opponent can't otherwise pull the undecided into his camp. On the other hand, many of the politically aloof undecided voters may not know Kerry that well; they do now, and this was the best possible scenario Kerry could have reasonably hoped for.
sorry about that.
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