The Devil is in the details. Reagan and Bush I both had liberal Democrat congresses to deal with. Bill Clinton’s aspirations of Nationalized Health Care was stopped by the GOP taking control of congress in 1994. The GOP also pushed Welfare and a Blanced budget amendment. GW Bush is an exception in that he pushed things like the Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage Program. One of the biggest areas of spending under Bush was for National Security. So if you speak in generalities like so many who wish to minimize the differences between parties for their own political goals which is to weaken the GOP then they can only accomplish that goal by addressing things in invalid ways like reducing the whole thing down to who was President during a time. The real picture is much different. The GOP needs to better hold the line on spending that is certain GW Bush was horrible regardless of how you slice him on spending and this trillion dollar bailout is only going to make the ledger worse for him. The Government is like a bad child, we are their enablers, we need to take the check book away from both Democrats and Republicans but we certainly don’t need more liberal democrats in congress because they don’t even understand the concept of fiscal restraint.
Oh I absolutely agree. Republican presidents have had to deal with Democratic Congresses before, but that doesn’t absolve them of guilt. Like you point out with Bush, I’m just making the observation that government tends to grow no matter what. From what I can tell, Nixon and Eisenhower certainly weren’t bastions of fiscal responsibility. It’s unfortunate.
The reason I posted this was because it was against my expectations. Certainly it doesn’t make the democrats better, but it is worth reflecting on IMO.