Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton . . .

Hillary Clinton likes to try to thwart the "dynasty" argument against her by insisting that it takes a Clinton to clean up the mess of a Bush, and that the last time a Clinton was President the economy did pretty well. The only problem with that argument is, the Clinton economy was much like the Reagan economy, only with a surplus. It remains up to debate over how much of the fabled surplus was in actual money and how much was in promissory notes, but the fact is that much of the prosperity of the 1990's was not in natural resources or tangible products but in suburban expansion and real estate speculation. The North American Free Trade Agreement, ratified in 1993, caused a lot of industrial jobs to be shipped to Mexico, and much of the suburban expansion of the 1990's was made possible by cheap gasoline. Conditions have changed so greatly since the year 2000 - mainly concerning terrorism, deficits, and the subprime mortgage mess - which makes it as unlikely for Hillary to bring back the nineties as it would have been for a permanent Beatles reunion to bring back the sixties.

I don't know how much Hillary knows about money and taxes. She won't release her tax returns.