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Bulls Bears and the Ballot Box: How the Performance of Our Presidents Has Impacted Your Wallet
Which U.S. Presidents have been the best and worst economic stewards for our nation, the business community, and the average American family? Which political party has demonstrated superior economic performance while serving in the White House? Which economic principles have led to each President’s success or failure? What have our elected officials and the voters learned from these results? Bulls, Bears, and the Ballot Box will examine these and many other questions. The answers will surprise you.
The authors review 80 years of our nation’s economic history from the Great Depression and Herbert Hoover, to the Great Recession and George W. Bush; a time period in which the Democratic and Republican Parties occupied the Oval Office for precisely 40 years each. This is where the similarity ends. The authors explore this unique comparative opportunity by using historical data, as well as statistical analysis, to objectively score the Presidents and the political parties under their customized ranking system. Using their Presidential Rules for Economic Success (PRES Rules) they explain the economic stumbles and triumphs posted by these 13 presidents as CEO’s of the American economy.
Bulls, Bears, and the Ballot Box cuts through all of the hyperbole and mantra. It is a “must read” for all voters - independents, liberals and conservatives alike. This book may change your vote in 2012; it will certainly challenge your thinking and mainstream political beliefs.
The authors review 80 years of our nation’s economic history from the Great Depression and Herbert Hoover, to the Great Recession and George W. Bush; a time period in which the Democratic and Republican Parties occupied the Oval Office for precisely 40 years each. This is where the similarity ends. The authors explore this unique comparative opportunity by using historical data, as well as statistical analysis, to objectively score the Presidents and the political parties under their customized ranking system. Using their Presidential Rules for Economic Success (PRES Rules) they explain the economic stumbles and triumphs posted by these 13 presidents as CEO’s of the American economy.
Bulls, Bears, and the Ballot Box cuts through all of the hyperbole and mantra. It is a “must read” for all voters - independents, liberals and conservatives alike. This book may change your vote in 2012; it will certainly challenge your thinking and mainstream political beliefs.
266 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2012
9 people are currently reading
145 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 2, 2012
After reading this Forbes article, I picked up this book as a possible Christmas gift for some of my relatives. My expectations were too high from the start; I hoped to find a book that would make one person stop moaning about the economy's "inevitable collapse" due to Obama's reelection and make another stop compulsively gardening to stave off the coming "food shortages." In other words, I hoped it would present a convincing enough argument to turn crazy radicals sane. In retrospect, I realize that's too much to ask of any book.
The main flaw in this one is apparent right from the start -- opinions are often presented as facts. In the first pages, for example, it is stated that one of the criteria for determining the economic success of a president was how much he equitably distributed the country's wealth among its people; my radical relatives would immediately disagree with that standard and probably wouldn't read any further. It then goes on to state that civil rights issues are mere "distractions" and that you should only vote based on "what's important -- your pocketbook." This is the point where it turned me off, although I decided to stick with it.
The book goes on to analyze several presidencies based on what the authors call their PRES Rankings (Presidential Rankings of Economic Stewardship.) The book reads like a lower-level college essay, and the whole thing is too heavily footnoted (most footnotes seem to lead to PDFs of university courses) and overly simplified; I'm not sure if the authors felt like they had to dumb it down to reach their intended audience or even who their intended audience was.
Another thing that detail-oriented readers are going to get stuck on is the number of typos and editing errors in the text; while not the worst I've seen, it is certainly significant. In my mind, the validity of your argument, no matter how well-researched, looks diminished when you haven't even bothered to copyread it properly. The authors also use the same quote from Marriner Eccles (to whom this book seems like some kind of stalkery love note) about a poker game four separate times, which by the fourth time is just sloppy writing.
The chapters themselves are also heavily skewed toward the Democrats. Republican presidents are vilified in the text for everything from their upbringing and education to their campaign tactics, whereas Democrats are only lauded for their economic successes. I (full disclosure) am a staunch Democrat, and even I noticed the disparity; it is not subtle, and right-wing-leaning readers are going to pick it up and run with it. It has the effect of making the book seem like subjective propaganda. The authors would have served themselves better to just let their impressive economic facts speak for themselves.
The main flaw in this one is apparent right from the start -- opinions are often presented as facts. In the first pages, for example, it is stated that one of the criteria for determining the economic success of a president was how much he equitably distributed the country's wealth among its people; my radical relatives would immediately disagree with that standard and probably wouldn't read any further. It then goes on to state that civil rights issues are mere "distractions" and that you should only vote based on "what's important -- your pocketbook." This is the point where it turned me off, although I decided to stick with it.
The book goes on to analyze several presidencies based on what the authors call their PRES Rankings (Presidential Rankings of Economic Stewardship.) The book reads like a lower-level college essay, and the whole thing is too heavily footnoted (most footnotes seem to lead to PDFs of university courses) and overly simplified; I'm not sure if the authors felt like they had to dumb it down to reach their intended audience or even who their intended audience was.
Another thing that detail-oriented readers are going to get stuck on is the number of typos and editing errors in the text; while not the worst I've seen, it is certainly significant. In my mind, the validity of your argument, no matter how well-researched, looks diminished when you haven't even bothered to copyread it properly. The authors also use the same quote from Marriner Eccles (to whom this book seems like some kind of stalkery love note) about a poker game four separate times, which by the fourth time is just sloppy writing.
The chapters themselves are also heavily skewed toward the Democrats. Republican presidents are vilified in the text for everything from their upbringing and education to their campaign tactics, whereas Democrats are only lauded for their economic successes. I (full disclosure) am a staunch Democrat, and even I noticed the disparity; it is not subtle, and right-wing-leaning readers are going to pick it up and run with it. It has the effect of making the book seem like subjective propaganda. The authors would have served themselves better to just let their impressive economic facts speak for themselves.
November 17, 2014
Whenever I pick up a book about a debatable topic I try hard to find one that only relays the facts and doesn't take a side to allow the reader make their own opinions. That said, the authors did a good job of explaining the rationale behind their data and what the results meant. The biggest criticism for me is that, while they said they tried to analyze things in a non-partisan way, they certainly leaned one way more and more as the book moved on. I like to think that it may have been that their results were the reason behind the side they ended up taking, but sometimes it seemed like they were just attacking for the sake of attacking, and that the rules they established were done so in order to make their opinions seem stronger. I will say that they make strong arguments that clearly one political party will agree with while the other bashes and says is crap. I think they make a strong argument, but everyone needs to make their own opinion. I guess that's the definition of politics.
January 26, 2017
Everyone should read this book!
August 23, 2019
This book makes the point that for the "modern era" (FDR to book publication during Obama), Democratic presidents have been significantly better for the economy than Republican presidents (the economy being defined three different ways: 1] whole country, 2] individuals, and 3] corporations). And this book backs up its point with detailed objective statistical research, which is presented as a whole bunch of graphs scattered throughout the book.
(Of course using a whole book to say just this one simple thing can be -and in my opinion in this case is- problematic. I'm quite ambivalent about this: books that really show their numeric chops -as Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"- are quickly ignored after their initial splash; on the other hand books -like this one- that try so hard to keep it simple that Excel's overkill, remain easily readable but can be discounted because their laser focus looks so simplistic.)
"Conventional wisdom" is of course that Republicans are better stewards of the economy. The reality shown in some detail by this book is just the opposite. The book provides some hand-wavey explanations of why that might be the case.
Although the methodology is very concretely numeric, leaving no room at all to "argue" with the purely objective conclusions, I nevertheless had the vague feeling the choice of methodology was somehow "rigged" to get the answer the authors wanted (of course any such "rigging" wasn't at all difficult to do:-). My biggest quibble with the methodology was the inclusion of the stock market as a factor in all three measures of economic success (national, individual, corporate), particularly its inclusion in the measure of _individual wealth. This was justified by saying that most individuals own stocks through their retirement plan (even if not directly). I found this less than satisfactory for several reasons: the rate of direct stock ownership by individuals is never actually given, "retirement" income is only a fraction of "non-retirement" income, many individuals are not fully "vested" in a retirement plan ...or even have no retirement at all other than Social Security, and in many cases Joe Sixpac is so thoroughly alienated from the stock market that he doesn't even know whether it went up or down.
The book also includes -with no numeric justification whatsoever unfortunately- a short set of "rules" presidents should follow. While I personally like these particular rules very much, my objective evaluation is they're overly moralistic and quite ad hoc, summing up to little more than "I miss the good old days when presidents were public servants".
There is always the nagging feeling -unfortunately not addressed numerically as it could have been- that a significant part of the difference is just random chance. For example blaming the Great Depression on Herbert Hoover brings down the Republican numbers considerably. What if Hoover had been a Democrat? Or giving FDR considerable credit for the vast growth of the economy in wartime brings up Democratic numbers significantly. What if FDR had been a Republican? Also, there is the nagging feeling that in the various cases, poor stewardship of the economy was for very different reasons, reasons that in some cases have little to do with the presented "rules".
Even though it focuses on its one main point, the book does (accidentally) make a few interesting asides: 1] Economic cause-and-effect are typically separated by several years, thus often giving a later president credit for decisions that were made by an earlier one. 2] In many cases presidents have made wildly fiscally irresponsible decisions (ex: consistently drafting badly unbalanced budgets) which didn't become apparent until the next president had to clean up the mess. This happens so often the "conventional wisdom" _could be that Democratic presidents clean up a fiscal mess. 3] Larger individual financial inequality _seems to be associated with lower profitability of corporations! If this is indeed true, it's a big deal, as the reasons for limiting inequality wouldn't just be "it's not fair to the little guy" but rather in fact "_everybody suffers".
(Of course using a whole book to say just this one simple thing can be -and in my opinion in this case is- problematic. I'm quite ambivalent about this: books that really show their numeric chops -as Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"- are quickly ignored after their initial splash; on the other hand books -like this one- that try so hard to keep it simple that Excel's overkill, remain easily readable but can be discounted because their laser focus looks so simplistic.)
"Conventional wisdom" is of course that Republicans are better stewards of the economy. The reality shown in some detail by this book is just the opposite. The book provides some hand-wavey explanations of why that might be the case.
Although the methodology is very concretely numeric, leaving no room at all to "argue" with the purely objective conclusions, I nevertheless had the vague feeling the choice of methodology was somehow "rigged" to get the answer the authors wanted (of course any such "rigging" wasn't at all difficult to do:-). My biggest quibble with the methodology was the inclusion of the stock market as a factor in all three measures of economic success (national, individual, corporate), particularly its inclusion in the measure of _individual wealth. This was justified by saying that most individuals own stocks through their retirement plan (even if not directly). I found this less than satisfactory for several reasons: the rate of direct stock ownership by individuals is never actually given, "retirement" income is only a fraction of "non-retirement" income, many individuals are not fully "vested" in a retirement plan ...or even have no retirement at all other than Social Security, and in many cases Joe Sixpac is so thoroughly alienated from the stock market that he doesn't even know whether it went up or down.
The book also includes -with no numeric justification whatsoever unfortunately- a short set of "rules" presidents should follow. While I personally like these particular rules very much, my objective evaluation is they're overly moralistic and quite ad hoc, summing up to little more than "I miss the good old days when presidents were public servants".
There is always the nagging feeling -unfortunately not addressed numerically as it could have been- that a significant part of the difference is just random chance. For example blaming the Great Depression on Herbert Hoover brings down the Republican numbers considerably. What if Hoover had been a Democrat? Or giving FDR considerable credit for the vast growth of the economy in wartime brings up Democratic numbers significantly. What if FDR had been a Republican? Also, there is the nagging feeling that in the various cases, poor stewardship of the economy was for very different reasons, reasons that in some cases have little to do with the presented "rules".
Even though it focuses on its one main point, the book does (accidentally) make a few interesting asides: 1] Economic cause-and-effect are typically separated by several years, thus often giving a later president credit for decisions that were made by an earlier one. 2] In many cases presidents have made wildly fiscally irresponsible decisions (ex: consistently drafting badly unbalanced budgets) which didn't become apparent until the next president had to clean up the mess. This happens so often the "conventional wisdom" _could be that Democratic presidents clean up a fiscal mess. 3] Larger individual financial inequality _seems to be associated with lower profitability of corporations! If this is indeed true, it's a big deal, as the reasons for limiting inequality wouldn't just be "it's not fair to the little guy" but rather in fact "_everybody suffers".
November 4, 2019
Comparisons of the impact of presidents actions on the economy
This book should be taught in every civics, economics, and political science class in the US. It is well researched with copious references, a unique model for effective government. It includes clear, quantifiable methods to measure the effectiveness of that government on the financial health of the business and personal segments of our society. A must read for every voter.
This book should be taught in every civics, economics, and political science class in the US. It is well researched with copious references, a unique model for effective government. It includes clear, quantifiable methods to measure the effectiveness of that government on the financial health of the business and personal segments of our society. A must read for every voter.
Read
February 11, 2016An eye-opening book. Bob Deitrick and Lew Goldfarb turn conventional wisdom right on its head and illistrate how Democrats really do serve the economic interests of the middle class. Read this book. Now.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews