Both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama faced deep recessions. The problems Reagan inherited from hapless predecessor Jimmy Carter and which immediately followed his inauguration were arguably more severe. Inflation in 1979 and 1980 averaged 13%. The prime interest rate was 20% the day the Gipper was inaugurated (imagine this economy, which can’t get going with the prime rate at an all-time post-World War II low of 3.25%, trying to recover in the face of double-digit interest rates). Unemployment was soaring. Reagan, while facing a Congress controlled by the party of tax and spend, needed to somehow revive the economy even as the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker was of necessity taming inflation with a very tight monetary policy, creating a double-dip recession.

Our current president can only claim that “the private sector is fine” if he pretends that what Reagan’s policies accomplished never happened. It did, with the following results after the double-dip recession ended in November 1982 compared to how the current economy has performed since its recession officially ended in June 2009 (data used is from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS]).