Once again, a journalist has misinformed the public due to a fundamental lack of understanding of basic quantitative data.

In today’s New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes that President Bush “has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents.”

But as Dean Baker points out (via Ezra Klein), the actual economic data (!) show that “President Bush’s growth record is better than his father’s, but it is worse than the record of every other president in the last half century” — here’s the graphic Klein made:

Indeed, when compared to economic recoveries in the post-World War II era, the current one lags by virtually every measure, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed:

How can Stolberg not know this? And why is the Times letting her write about this subject without the assistance of someone who does?

Postscript: Much later in the article, Stolberg does state that “[t]he economic expansion that came after [Bush’s] tax cuts has largely benefited the wealthy.” While this is accurate, it implicitly assigns undeserved credit for the expansion to Bush’s tax cuts. Also, according to the NBER committee that dates recessions, the expansion began in November 2001 — after Bush’s first tax cut but before his second one.

Update 1/29 7:45 AM: What’s especially pernicious about this is that Stolberg’s statement about Bush’s record of economic growth doesn’t quite count as an error in the journalistic sense, so it probably won’t be corrected. But if the Times misspells your name, you can guarantee they’ll promptly correct the record. What a bizarre culture.