Slate’s Jacob Weisberg is distorting things again in order to attack President Bush. Weisberg writes,

“…how did Bush become a victim of a weak economy, rather than the perpetrator of one? There is …some explicit dishonesty [in Bush's new TV ads]. …In fact, as Bush acknowledged quite recently in his Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert, he did not inherit a recession from President Clinton. The recession began two months after he arrived, in March 2001. …This is the only demonstrably untrue statement to be found in these three ads. Tellingly, it is also nearly the only statement of fact in any of them.”

First, Bush never “acknowledged” that. Here is what he did say:

“The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. That was the first sign that things were troubled. The recession started upon my arrival. It could have been some say February, some say March, some speculate maybe earlier it started, but nevertheless it happened as we showed up here.”

His point is that the recession started around the time the Bush administration came into office, which was obviously before any of his policies became law. According to a recent article in the Washington Post titled Economists Say Recession Started in 2000, the economy tanked under Clinton’s watch. It got worse when we were attacked on 9-11. But since then, under Bush, the economy has improved greatly, to the point we were when Clinton was running for re-election on a supposedly great economic record.