The New York Times and the post-election stock market rally

Bloggers are talking about an article in today's New York Times about the post-election stock market rally. TigerHawk thinks the article represents anti-Bush bias in the New York Times.

The Big Trunk at Power Line seems to agree that TigerHawk found anti-Bush bias.

The New York Times is surely biased against Bush, but I am not sure I see any bias here. I think the real explanation is like TigerHawk (who says he's tall, went to an Ivy League School, and has muscles) said:

If one were charitably inclined toward the Times on this fine New Year's Day, one might give it a pass. I suppose that their starting lineup isn't on duty on New Year's Eve.

Well I am feeling charitably inclined today. Except for mistakes where the New York Times' chart says Harry Truman won the election in 1944 and Teddy Roosevelt won in 1900. There's no excuse for getting historical facts wrong.

TigerHawk says that if the rally were measured from October 26th instead of November 1st, the Bush rally would be a lot bigger. I suppose it's true, but today's article is about post-Election stock market performance, and October 26th was before election day! You could always find a set of arbitrary dates to make a short-term span seem better or worse than it actually was.

I don't know why post-election stock market performance matters anyway. According to most finance experts, short term stock market fluctuations are a random walk. The biggest post-election to New Year's stock market rally happened after Herbert Hoover was elected. But during his presidency, our nation suffered its worst economic collapse in history. Ronald Reagan's post-election stock market performances were pretty mediocre, but his policies led to great economic expansion.

President Bush doesn't deserve any economic credit anyway. What has he done for our economy? Has he reduced wasteful government spending? Has he eliminated burdensome regulations? Has he simplified the tax code? I think not. People who rightly hate Democrats are too quick to praise Bush because he's not a Democrat, but in reality he's a pretty lousy President.