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I think the guy will go down as one of the worst presidents in modern times, but I wouldn't lay all of that at his feet. A lot of what we're seeing is a function of structural weakness in our economy that goes beyond politics. Here's a basic summary of what the U.S. faced in 2000:

1. We were coming off a period of strong financial performance, though much of it was illusory (think of all those "dot-com" companies with ridiculous stock prices even though they made no profits).

2. We were entering a period when the first Baby Boomers would be retiring in large numbers. This was a significant turn of events because we had a very large (and growing) cohort of people who could be expected to live another 20-30 years with declining (or non-existent) productivity and growing taxpayer expenses associated with them.

3. Nobody had the political will to deal with Item #2 -- mainly because any move to cut entitlements was a political landmine (think of what happened to the Democrats in 2010 after passing ObamaCare with its $500 billion of Medicare cuts).

So here we are in 2016, with a stagnant economy, government spending out of control, and a national debt that now exceeds $60,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. And there is really no way to deal with it other than by importing tens of millions of new people who will be dumb enough to come here and take on their $60,000 debt to support the fading, declining Baby Boomers.

I contend that most of what we've seen here would have happened regardless of who was in the White House from 2000 to 2016.