As an economic historian and a political junky (I have buttons I wore during the 1952 Presidential campaign) I am always a bit frustrated when people are blaming or giving credit to an incumbent president for the state of the economy. While sometimes it is true, the causes of the movement of the economy are more complicate than the activates of one agent. It is the same as measuring relative worth.
I have written an essay titled The Relative Performance of the Economy under the Presidents of the United States from 1900 to 2020. What I do is compare the performance of several aggregate economic variables over the different administrations. The goal of this new essay on our site is to help the reader better understand how the economy performed during each of the presidential terms from 1900 to 2020.