Description

Voters weigh a president’s economic stewardship every four years–usually rewarding incumbents and their party during good economic times and punishing them during bad times. Yet, presidents have less influence on the economic cycle while in office than the public realizes. They often are beneficiaries or victims of the marketplace, Federal Reserve interest rate changes and predecessors’ policies that later boost the economy or blow it up. We’ll examine this pattern from Lyndon Johnson to Joe Biden.