By Obama Standard, Clinton Behind Reagan in Jobs Creation

During his excellent lawyering case for a very guilty client, former President Bill Clinton dropped a bombshell that stunned much of the media. He said, “Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private-sector jobs. So what’s the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42.”

As we noted at the time, this statistic can only be created by dating job creation from the day a president takes office to the day he leaves. And by that standard, Barack Obama is the worst job creator of the last fifty years.

There’s another problem for Clinton. If we use Barack Obama’s standard of responsibility, Clinton drops behind Ronald Reagan as a job creator. At the Democratic National Convention, speaker after speaker got up to explain that Obama had created 4.5 million jobs over the last 29 months. That means he only assumes responsibility for his tenure beginning in February 2010. By that standard, Ronald Reagan’s tenure would have begun in February 1982 and ended January 1990; Bill Clinton’s would have started February 1994 and ended January 2002. Overall, Reagan would have created some 18.59 million jobs over that tenure; Clinton would only have created 18.117 million.

The game of statistics is easy to manipulate. Clinton did it during his speech. Obama’s minions have done it during his campaign. Either way you stack it up, Clinton’s record is good, and Obama’s is terrible.