Difference was Reagan had a strengthening economy when he came into office and Obama had a finacial meltdown. Also with dubya thats pretty much all the jobs he got in 8 years.
This is NOT true. We had a recession in January - July 1980 and a double dip in July 1981 –
November 1982. The circumstances were obviously different from the 2008 financial crisis, but it is incorrect to say that Reagan had a "strengthening economy when he came into office."
What matters today: We do NOT have a strengthening economy as evidenced by the fact that job growth has lagged behind population growth for almost half a decade. Obama needs to man up and take responsibility for, at the very least, the last two years. If he wanted to run against George W. Bush, he should have ran in 2004. If the economy was actually strengthening, most people would want four more years of the last two years. That is obviously not the case.
Reagan had stagflation. He needed an economic downturn to force people to lower their expectations. Unemployment was high because of millions of baby-boomers entering the workforce in the mass of low-paying jobs in retail sales and fast food. We went from an overheated economy to something more normal, one in which people who got travesty wages had to change their ways, remain dependent on parents, or live in poverty. Dubya was able to cover an ill-performing economy by fostering a corrupt boom in real estate with predatory financing -- a boom that did more to destroy capital than to create it. The last two years of the Bush II economy included the worst economic meltdown in nearly 80 years, and there is no quick fix for such a meltdown. The best analogue for the 2005-2007 meltdown was the first half of the three-year meltdown that began in September 1929. The relevant analogue for Barack Obama is the last two years of the Hoover Administration... except that this time Social Security, Medicare, FDIC insurance of bank deposits, and welfare programs of the Great Society are in place.
So there really is no good analogue.
There has been no double-dip downturn... but no speculative boom, either. Tea Party Republicans have of course frustrated any opportunity for infrastructure projects that might put people back to work, so those are not about to shut down with multitudes of recent construction workers competing for retail jobs.
