In his defense of the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, John Adams famously said, “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

As I pointed out last week, a more recent former President, and his willing sycophants, have, over a multitude of months, asserted that “by almost every economic measure, we are significantly better off” as a result of his administration.  They would do well to consider John Adams, because whatever their personal or political wishes, they too are unable to alter the state of facts and evidence.

In this post, we will examine the Obama record on Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  GDP is the primary indicator used to gauge the health of a country’s economy.  It represents the total value of all goods and services produced in the country in a given year, and it is the obvious place to start to evaluate how “significantly better off” we really are.

By way of background, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is an agency of the Department of Commerce and is part of the Economics and Statistics Administration.  The BEA produces economic accounts and statistics on the U.S. economy.  The cornerstone of BEA’s statistics is the national income and product accounts (NIPA) which include GDP and related measures.  The BEA measures GDP in both “nominal” and “real” terms.  “Nominal” is the value of the product at the time it was produced, while “real” value is adjusted for inflation.  Real values are the more important measure because they show the extent to which increases over time are driven by actual growth rather than inflation.

As can be seen in the graph below, since the Hoover administration, the average annual growth in real GDP has been 3.3%. That would rise to 3.5% if you exclude the Obama years, since the average growth rate during Obama’s presidency was only 1.5%.  In fact, the ONLY President since Hoover not to see even 1 year of at least 3% real GDP growth was Obama.  Even President Ford − who came into office during a time of economic decline, political turmoil, and had only two full years in office − managed one year above 3%.

But of course, as the population grows, one would expect the economy to grow as well.  More people producing and consuming goods and services means a bigger economic pie.  And given that the Obama administration policy was to bring as many people into the country as possible − both legally and illegally – a more accurate measure would be growth in real per capita GDP.  If we adjust for population, real per capita GDP under Obama looks even worse – growing at an annual average rate of only 0.7% compared with a 2.2% average since Hoover.

So, are we better off as a result of the Obama administration?  Real per capita GDP was slightly higher at the end of his presidency than it was at the beginning.  So, by that measure, we are technically “better off.”  But the same thing could be said for every administration for the past 87 years!  The question under review is, are we “significantly” better off as a result of his administration?  The answer is no.  Not even close.  Compared to the economic performance of the Obama administration, the country performed “significantly better” under each of the previous 12 administrations than under Obama.

Unfortunately for former President Obama, just because he says otherwise, doesn’t make it so.