, Columnist
Americans Think the Economy Is Bad Because It Actually Is
Wages and benefits are moving up but living standards aren’t. So it’s reasonable for people to feel pinched at the moment, no matter how positive the statistical indicators may be.
Hard to feel good about that.
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Commentators friendly to the president couldn’t understand it. The economy was expanding. Unemployment was falling. But the public was unhappy about the economy and the president’s popularity kept slipping.
That’s the way things looked in 2006 to a lot of Republicans, and they concluded that the problem was that the “Bush boom” was “the greatest story never told.”