It’s a fair question. For some, the answer may be “no.” But for a lot more, the answer will be “yes.” For me, I cashed in some Apple stock which got badly beaten down by the Bush housing crisis; this week, I sold it for almost four times what it was worth when Bush left office. If nothing else, it speaks to the health of the stock market, which right-wingers initially tried to blame Obama for just a month or two after he took office (they don’t any more, you will note).

But let’s take a look at a more general picture. Three very meaningful questions asked in a post from DailyKos:

1. What was the average monthly private sector job growth in 2008, the final year of the Bush presidency, and what has it been so far in 2010?

2. What was the Federal deficit for the last fiscal year of the Bush presidency, and what was it for the first full fiscal year of the Obama presidency?

3. What was the stock market at on the last day of the Bush presidency? What is it at today?

There is a fourth question (about Boehner, the next Speaker should Republicans win the House, campaigning with a Nazi re-enactor), but I see it as relatively inconsequential, and meaningless to most voters, so let’s go with those three. The answers:

1. In 2008, we lost an average of 317,250 private sector jobs per month. In 2010, we have gained an average of 95,888 private sector jobs per month. (Source) That’s a difference of nearly five million jobs between Bush’s last year in office and President Obama’s second year.

2. In FY2009, which began on September 1, 2008 and represents the Bush Administration’s final budget, the budget deficit was $1.416 trillion. In FY2010, the first budget of the Obama Administration, the budget deficit was $1.291 trillion, a decline of $125 billion. (Source) Yes, that means President Obama has cut the deficit — there’s a long way to go, but we’re in better shape now than we were under Bush and the GOP.

3. On Bush’s final day in office, the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 closed at 7,949, 1,440, and 805, respectively. Today, as of 10:15AM Pacific, they are at 11,108, 2,512, and 1,183. That means since President Obama took office, the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 have increased 40%, 74%, and 47%, respectively.

While the source of the questions and answers is biased, the facts are not. Once again, under Obama and the Democrats, job numbers have improved markedly, the deficit, while unwieldily, is not Obama’s doing, and business is much better than it was. Compared to two years ago, things are much, much better.

The question any self-interested voter should ask is, do I want to go with the people who made things worse, or do I want to go with the team that made things better?

You can focus on side details as much as you want, try to ignore the mountain for the pebbles, but one thing is inescapable: Obama and the Democrats performed well on the economy–much better than the Republicans, who dropped us into the cesspool Obama and the Dems have subsequently been blamed for.

For those seeking to confirm the job stats, go ahead and visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics site, and download the data tables showing All Employees, Total private; the data you get will show you private sector job standings by month. Use Excel to calculate the month-to-month changes, then (a) add the gains & losses in 2008 and in 2010 (to September), and then (b) chart it out.

The raw table:

Here’s the table after transposing, selecting, and calculations:

And the chart:

Oh, and from a Feb. 2009 NYTimes article about private sector jobs over the past 35 years:

One of the weakest sectors was manufacturing. The number of such jobs peaked in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president, and fell in every administration since, with the exception of a small gain in the Clinton years. The decline in the current administration, at a rate of 3.1 percent a year, is the steepest yet seen.

Carter and Clinton were the best at adding jobs; Reagan and both bushes the worst. How about that. If Obama’s total numbers are low, it’s due to the hole Bush left for him to climb out of.