I know you're right, but hopefully that is slowly changing as more people have access to other information channels.
IMHO the liberal media has planted the belief in the public's psyche that presidents bear total responsibility for the state of the national economy. That belief has worked for many electoral cycles, purely by chance IMHO, to the advantage of the media's favored candidates, liberal Democrats.
I mean by that, the phenomenon known as the business cycle has by chance favored the Democratic administration for the past 7 or more decades. That phenomenon seems to operate largely independent from government fiscal policy, and Republican presidents have usually had the great misfortune of riding the downside of the cycle. I offer Hoover, Nixon (as Ike's VP), Ford (although the Nixon pardon hurt him too), and Bush #1. Only once in recent history has the cycle worked against a Democrat, the bumbling, clueless Jimmy Carter. It appears to me that the liberal media has a powerful interest in promoting the notion that the economic philosophy of administrations determines the economic health of the nation.
Hopefully the dismal pattern will be broken in '04. I am very hopeful that by then the tide will be running in favor of the Bush administration, and for once the fallacy that presidents are wholly responsible for the state of the economy can work to our benefit. (fingers crossed)